A picture is worth a thousand words, and this year, emojis confirmed it. Of 3,782 Unicode-compliant emoticons, the social intelligence tool Meltwater has unveiled the 10 most-used emojis this year on 12 platforms, including Instagram and Twitter (X), between Jan 1 and Nov 30.

The results show that humour seems to have been the strongest driving force for emoji use. At the top of the list is the “face with tears of joy”, with 254 million mentions on social networks, often the most popular with millennials. It is followed by the “loudly crying face”, with 208 million – a Gen Z favourite.

Finally, the “rolling-on-the-floor laughing” emoji takes third place with 128 million mentions.

Note that, unlike the two others, the “loudly crying face” can be used to express both sadness and exhaustion, as well as joy and crying with laughter.

While the most popular emojis may vary from year to year, the ranking shows a massive use of emoticons linked to love and passion, with the red heart in fourth place in the top 10 ranking, fire in fifth.

The “smiling face with heart eyes” and the “smiling face with hearts” follow in the seventh and eighth places, respectively. These emojis were particularly popular on Valentine’s Day, Feb 14, with the red heart leading the way.

Meltwater points to a surge in use of the fire emoticon on Oct 26, propelling it to third place at the time, which was apparently due to a Bitcoin spam, copied and pasted onto X “probably by bots”.

Still, the fire emoji has also taken hold on Pinterest, Twitch and Instagram. On Twitter, Reddit and Facebook, the “face with tears of joy” emoticon was the most popular.

Often used to highlight passion for or interest in a particular subject, Meltwater points out that the most-used emojis on Pinterest – the red heart, sparkles, smiling face with heart eyes, and fire – were associated with phrases like “you’ll love this” and “I love this idea!”

In the United States, the “face with tears of joy” emoji leads the way as the most popular, as it does in the United Kingdom and Nigeria; while the “loudly crying face” has taken hold in South Africa, and the red heart has conquered India.

The top 10 most-used emojis this year are: