Jul 17, 06:00 AM

Global Users Send 10 Billion Emojis Daily as World Celebrates Emoji Day

People and organisations across the world are marking World Emoji Day, celebrated annually on 17 July, the date shown on the calendar emoji. Emojipedia, whose founder Jeremy Burge launched the observance in 2014, estimates that users send roughly 10 billion emojis every day, making the pictograms one of the most ubiquitous forms of digital communication. According to data highlighted by Italian news agency ANSA, the red heart, the ‘loudly crying face’ and the flame icon are currently the three most popular symbols. The total number of approved emojis stands just below 4,000, and the non-profit Unicode Consortium is expected to vote in September on a slate of additional characters that would lift the count to 3,954. Shifts in usage continue to emerge, with Generation Z adopting new, often ironic, meanings for long-standing icons. Technology companies—including Apple, Microsoft and major social-media platforms—typically roll out updated emoji keyboards shortly after Unicode approvals, ensuring near-universal compatibility across devices. While emojis were first devised in Japan in the late 1990s, their integration into smartphones from 2008 onward cemented their global reach, and analysts expect the growing catalogue to reinforce the trend toward imagery-driven text communication.