How the world types: keyboard habits in 2026
We looked at anonymized input data from four regions. The differences in how people reach for emoji are bigger than you might expect.
A small disclaimer
Cross-region comparisons are messy. Input methods differ, keyboard apps differ, and what gets logged as an emoji versus a sticker varies by platform. With that out of the way, the patterns are still striking.
Three takeaways
First, the gap between the most-used and tenth-most-used emoji is much wider in English-speaking markets than in Japanese or Korean ones. Second, hand-gesture emoji dominate in Spanish-speaking regions to a degree we didn't see anywhere else. Third, the humble red heart is the only symbol that lands in the top five across every region we looked at.
The red heart is the closest thing the internet has to a universal word.
What we didn't expect
The biggest surprise was the rise of food emoji in conversational use — not just on menus and restaurant pages, but as shorthand in friend-group chats. The peach has finally been displaced as the most-sent food character.
