We are obsessed with emoji. That’s a fact. We’ll send text with a smiley face next to sushi next to a psycho cat. It doesn’t matter: an emoji says a thousand words.
Emoji mania
Did you know that 74% of Americans report using emoji every single day? Little digital images are gradually colonizing our virtual lives.
A study from smartphone keyboard maker SwiftKey attempts to discover what emojis are popular in each state. The results — dubbed The United States of Emoji
— are based on the analysis of more than one billion emoji used in throughout the U.S.
Learning about how Americans use emoji
The cactus was the top emoji used in Arizona, while the Statue of Liberty icon was most frequently used in New York. Researchers came up with a handful of the fascinating – and sometimes totally obvious – insights. You can dig into the rest of the data with their interactive map here.
“If you were to go by media coverage, you might think we’ve stopped using traditional language altogether and replaced it with one characterized by tiny yellow doodles, smiling poo, and LOTS of trains,” the report states. SwiftKey has also launched Emoji Insights, three new stats that tell Americans about their emoji use.
Why are we into emojis?
This latest study represents the follow-up of similar research SwiftKey carried out globally– revealing the most popular emoji across 16 different languages. Happy faces, sad faces and hearts were found to be the three most popular emojis overall. The ultimate aim was to reveal how different nationality use emoji differently, from the United States to France to Turkey.
“Emoji are a great way to add personality to a text-based conversation,” stated Jeremy Burge, the founder of website Emojipedia told Mashable. Like the name suggests, it’s an encyclopedia for all things emoji.
While most use emoji to add a little color to a conversation, others are literally obsessed. Dr. Owen Churches, of the school of psychology at Flinders University in Australia, conducted a study on emoticons, which showed that people reacted to them the same way they would react to a real human face.
What do you think of the rise of the United States of emoji? Share your views in the comments section below.
