A heart, a laughing face or a spark – sometimes that’s enough to get your message across. Or is it? On the occasion of World Emoji Day (July 17), we mapped out the latest trends in 2025, what misunderstandings emoticons can cause, and how to prevent them, with the help of media researcher Ádám Guld.
According to international research, emojis are now used by every generation in digital communication. This visual language fits perfectly with the trends of today’s media space, where short and easy-to-understand messages compete for attention. Emoticons play a particularly important role in social media, as they not only add color to the message, but also help in the immediate, visual expression of emotions and reactions. According to Yettel’s latest, comprehensive research, three-quarters of respondents have received an emoji whose meaning they were not sure of. A misunderstood sign, a differently interpreted icon, is often enough to set us off on a conversation. And the most common misunderstandings don’t even happen in romantic exchanges, but between generations.
When an emoji means something different to a grandma than it does to a grandchild
It is no coincidence that there is so much misunderstanding, as the same emoji often means something different depending on who sends it and who reads it. According to Yettel’s research, the biggest gap in interpretation can be observed with the like sign (👍): while three-quarters of respondents (76%) interpret it as simple approval, positive feedback, 27% of Generation Z already read a clearly negative message from it – rejection, irony or even insult. The classic smiling head (🙂) also carries a similar double meaning: according to 57% of older people (Generation X and Y), it is a nice, positive, friendly sign, while 45% of Generation Z interprets it as a passive-aggressive, condescending message – as if to say: "this is not worth responding to."
“Younger generations are the creators of digital trends, while older generations are more likely to follow them – this difference is also clearly visible in the use of emojis. Generation Y is somewhere in between: they use emojis confidently, but they no longer shape the innovations in meaning, but rather follow them closely. Thus, they often play a mediating role between the different layers of digital language,” explains Ádám Guld, a media researcher, who believes that emojis now mean much more than simple pictograms expressing emotions.
Emoji trends for 2025: apathy, environmentalism and artificial intelligence
According to Ádám Guld, if the internet is the new conversation space, then emojis are our gestures, which change from year to year. Emoji 16.0 arrived in 2025, bringing not only new figures, but also social and emotional imprints. The most popular of the new emojis quickly emerged, including the emoticon with baggy eyes ( ), which users say responds well to the turbulent events of 2025. The paint palette ( ) appears more and more often in creative, art-themed posts, the fingerprint ( ) in security-related shares, and environmentally conscious users refer to the consequences of climate change with a bare tree ( ). The popularity of new AI technologies is shown by the fact that young people refer to the device with the emoji of sparks (✨) with a “magical” meaning.
“The world of emojis is therefore still evolving rapidly, and it is worth paying attention to what, how and in what context we use them – the meaning can differ by generation, platform or topic. While younger people use emojis creatively, almost as a dialect, older people often use them only out of necessity,” says Ádám Guld. This is also part of the transformation that digital culture is shaping: it is not enough to know the tools, we also need to understand the underlying meanings.
In order to avoid conflicts caused by emoji use, let’s follow three basic rules:
- Don’t assume that everyone interprets a given signal in the same way – especially in family or work conversations.
- Feel free to ask questions if you don’t understand something – this way you can avoid embarrassing misunderstandings.
- Keep in mind that emojis are changing too – what we thought was a smile ten years ago may now have a sarcastic or passive-aggressive meaning.
The research was conducted by surveying 1,006 people online between March 14, 2024 and March 25, 2024. The sample is representative of the Hungarian population aged 16-65 by age, gender, region, settlement type and educational level. (Impetus Research).