😭 Is The New 😂 And Deadass Nobody Saw It Coming

Sorry millennials, but 😂 might actually be entering its flop era.

No because if you've been on group chats lately, you've probably noticed something. Nobody's typing 😂 anymore. Something genuinely funny happens and instead you get “BRO STOP 😭” or “I'm crying 😭” or, if things are truly unhinged, a fully deadpan “😭😭😭” with zero other text. And apparently, this isn't just your friend group being weird. It's an actual documented shift.

A recent New York Times analysis dug into 665 million emojis pulled from Google's Gboard data, and the results are, lowkey, kind of wild. In 2025, 😭 came out on top, making up more than 6% of all emoji usage. Not 😂. Not a heart. 😭. The crying laughing emoji everyone grew up spamming has quietly been dethroned.

Here's where it gets interesting. Looking at the shift between 2021 and 2025, the numbers tell the whole story:

• 😂: 8.0% of usage in 2021 down to 4.8% in 2025

• 🤣: 3.8% in 2021 up to 5.8% in 2025

• 😭: 3.5% in 2021 up to 6.5% in 2025, landing at the top

That's not a small dip for 😂, that's a full on decline arc. Meanwhile 😭 basically doubled in usage over four years. The way the internet's laughing emoji of choice has straight up flipped in less than half a decade is genuinely fascinating, and also kind of sends a message to anyone still defaulting to 😂 in every text.

So why is this happening? The New York Times also looked at Reddit conversations to understand how different age groups are actually interpreting these emojis, and the findings explain a lot. Younger users apparently use 😂 and 🤣 pretty differently from how older users do, and 😭 has basically evolved into this all purpose reaction emoji. It's not just for laughing anymore. It covers disbelief, embarrassment, secondhand chaos, exaggerated shock, and everything in between. One emoji, several completely different emotional registers, depending entirely on context.

Think about how you'd actually text these days. Someone sends something genuinely, painfully funny, and the instinct is “WHY WOULD YOU SAY THAT 😭” not “haha 😂.” Meanwhile 🤣 has carved out its own lane too, showing up more for that “that was actually so funny” moment where 😭 feels slightly too dramatic and 😂 feels a little too flat.

And that's kind of the thing, 😂 has started to read as almost formal at this point. It's giving polite laugh. It's giving the emoji equivalent of a customer service smile. It's the reaction you send when you want someone to know you registered that they made a joke, without actually committing to being affected by it emotionally. Meanwhile 😭 signals genuine, full body reaction, whether that's from something funny, something chaotic, or something so unhinged you don't even have words for it.

None of this is fixed, either. Emoji meanings shift depending on who's using them, which internet community they're coming from, and what generation is typing. What reads as sarcastic in one group chat reads as completely sincere in another. A boomer sending 😂 probably means exactly what it looks like. A Gen Z user sending the same emoji might mean something closer to mild amusement, or honestly, sometimes borderline judgment. Context is doing a lot of heavy lifting here, and it's only going to keep evolving.

At this point it's genuinely fair to say Gen Z has built an entire micro language out of emojis that older internet users are only half fluent in. The same three characters can carry laughter, sarcasm, chaos, secondhand embarrassment or full blown distress depending entirely on the situation, and somehow everyone in the group chat just... knows. No because that's actually kind of impressive when you think about it.

So is 😂 completely cooked? Not exactly, it's still sitting comfortably in the top tier, just not at the very top anymore. But the data doesn't lie, and right now, the numbers are highkey not in its favour. Whether it claims its throne back or slowly fades into “your uncle's favourite emoji” territory is honestly anyone's guess.

One thing's for sure though. Deadass, 😭 is having its moment, and it doesn't look like it's stepping down anytime soon.