The "crying intensely" emoji was the most used emoji worldwide in 2025 [1].
This ranking highlights how digital symbols evolve to express complex emotions that often transcend the literal meaning of the icon. The prevalence of the 😭 emoji suggests a global trend toward using hyperbolic expressions of emotion in daily text-based communication.
Reports indicate the findings stem from a Google analysis of global usage patterns [1]. While the emoji depicts a face with heavy streams of tears, its application in modern messaging often extends beyond sadness to include laughter, overwhelming joy, or frustration [2].
The data confirms that the symbol maintained the top position throughout 2025 [1]. This dominance reflects a broader pattern in social media behavior where users prefer high-intensity visual cues to convey tone in the absence of vocal inflection, a common challenge in asynchronous messaging.
Other emojis frequently appear in global rankings, but the "crying intensely" face has carved out a specific niche in youth culture and internet slang [2]. The shift toward this specific icon over more traditional symbols of sadness or happiness indicates a change in how users signal empathy and reaction in digital spaces [1].
As communication platforms continue to integrate more visual elements, the tracking of these trends provides a window into the collective emotional state of the internet. The 2025 data marks a continued reliance on a small set of highly versatile symbols to handle the majority of emotional heavy lifting in global conversations [2].
“The "crying intensely" emoji was the most used emoji worldwide in 2025.”
The dominance of the 😭 emoji illustrates the 'semantic drift' of digital language, where a symbol's original meaning (intense grief) is replaced by a versatile emotional shorthand. This suggests that global users are increasingly prioritizing the intensity of an emotion over its specific type, using a single icon to represent a wide spectrum of overwhelming feelings from hilarity to despair.
