Our data scientist has uncovered loads of fascinating numbers about social media performance this year.
The best times to post based on engagement, how often you should be posting on various platforms to maximize your reach, what the impact of replying to your comments actually is, and a whole lot more — Julian Winternheimer has been busy!
But this might be his most important analysis yet.
We give you:
✨ The Most Used Emojis in Social Media Posts in 2025. ✨
According to his analysis of millions of posts, these are the most-used emojis in social media posts this year.
OK, OK, it’s probably not the most important, actionable study we’ve ever done… and it probably won’t help shape your social media strategy in the way that all our other studies have done.
But it’s fun. And it’s a fascinating snapshot of this social media moment in time, too.
Is your most-used emoji on the list? Mine is right at the top!
Before you ask, I know my overuse didn’t sway the data. Julian based this analysis on the number of Buffer users who used the emoji this year, rather than total emoji use — so folks who are particularly attached to certain emojis, like me, didn’t influence the numbers too much.
Jump to a section:
The top emoji in social media posts in 2025
The full lineup: Top emojis used in social media posts in 2025
The top emoji in social media posts in 2025
It wasn’t even a close race: ✨ sparkles dominated social media content in 2025.
Over 207,768 Buffer users used sparkles in their posts this year, making it the most popular emoji by a significant margin. The 👉 pointing finger came in second place, with use by 131,783 users.
So the ✨ was 57.7% more popular than 👉.
In third place was another of my favorites, the 🔥 fire emoji, used by 125,665 users in 2025.
It’s not hard to understand why ✨ was so much higher than the other top contenders.
Sparkles convey excitement, newness, or emphasis without feeling overly casual or emotional — which is probably why it works across everything from LinkedIn posts to Instagram captions.
The full lineup: Top emojis used in social media posts in 2025
Based on our analysis of Buffer’s posting data, here are the emojis that organizations used most frequently this year:
✨ Sparkles👉 Backhand index pointing right🔥 Fire✅ Check mark button💡 Light bulb🚀 Rocket🌟 Glowing star👇 Backhand index pointing down🎉 Party popper❤️ Red heart📍 Round pushpin💪 Flexed biceps💬 Speech balloon👀 Eyes🔗 Link🚨 Police car light🌿 Herb🌍 Globe showing Europe-Africa💥 Collision✔ Check mark📅 Calendar🎯 Direct hit⚡ High voltage🤔 Thinking face➡ Right arrow🙌 Raising hands🧠 Brain💫 Dizzy💙 Blue heart🌱 Seedling
Isn’t it interesting that the top emojis aren’t the laughing faces or hearts you see dominating consumer usage?
The creators and brands that use Buffer’s social media content tend to be much more tactical.
Functional emojis dominate this list, pointing emojis direct attention, and checkmarks indicate completion or approval. Fire signals something trending or important, while light bulbs introduce ideas.
These emojis are less like emotional expressions and more like visual punctuation — a way to guide the eye, emphasize key points, and structure information in crowded feeds. As a writer, I found this really fascinating!
It’s worth noting that several of these emojis are also favored by LLMs, which suggests the use of AI tools to help write captions and posts.
I couldn’t find a scientific analysis of the most used emojis by tools like ChatGPT for a direct comparison. But, an interesting article on ChatGPT’s ‘style’ by The Washington Post, which analyzed over 300,000 publicly shared messages by the chatbot, found that the most used emojis were ✅ the check mark button (#4 on our list) and the 🧠 brain emoji (#27).
Top emojis of 2025 by platform
It gets even more interesting when you break things down by platform. While ✨ sparkles won overall, each platform has its own distinct emoji culture when it comes to professional content.
✨ Sparkles👉 Pointing right🔥 Fire
Instagram remains the most emoji-friendly platform — more users had emojis in their posts than any other platform — with sparkles leading by a huge margin. The Instagram algorithm rewards visually engaging content, and emojis are part of that visual language.
✨ Sparkles👉 Pointing right✅ Checkmark
What’s fascinating about LinkedIn is how tight the race is between the top three. Users are clearly experimenting with emoji use on the platform, finding ways to make professional content feel more approachable without sacrificing credibility.
TikTok
✨ Sparkles🔥 Fire👀 Eyes
The eyes emoji jumping to #3 on TikTok makes perfect sense. It’s all about watch time on this platform, and 👀 literally says “look at this.” Users posting on TikTok understand they’re competing for attention in a different way than on other platforms.
X/Twitter
✨ Sparkles🔥 Fire👉 Pointing right
The fast-moving nature of X means emojis need to communicate instantly. Fire and pointing emojis do exactly that — they signal urgency, importance, or direction without requiring additional context.
✨ Sparkles👉 Pointing right✅ Checkmark
Facebook’s emoji usage mirrors its role as the platform with the broadest reach. Users stick with universally understood emojis that work across diverse age groups and contexts.
Threads
✨ Sparkles🔥 Fire👇 Pointing down
As the newer platform in the mix, Threads shows similar patterns to X but with slightly more use of directional emojis.
YouTube
✨ Sparkles🔥 Fire👉 Pointing right
YouTube’s emoji usage reflects its role as a community-building platform. YouTubers use sparkles to highlight new uploads, fire to signal trending content, and pointing emojis to direct viewers to links in descriptions or pinned comments.
✨ Sparkles👉 Pointing right🔥 Fire
Pinterest perfectly embodies the “sparkles aesthetic” — the platform is all about inspiration and aspiration, and ✨ captures that energy. Pinners use it to emphasize beautiful imagery, DIY ideas, and save-worthy content.
Bluesky
✨ Sparkles👉 Pointing right🎉 Party popper
What’s interesting about Bluesky is that the party popper 🎉 makes the top three. Bluesky is still pretty new (even though it recently hit the 40-million user mark), so I get the celebratory vibe.
Mastodon
✨ Sparkles👉 Pointing right🎉 Party popper
Like Bluesky, Mastodon shows 🎉 in the top three, which makes sense for a platform built on community values and celebrating decentralized social media.
What changed throughout 2025
The graph above shows the rank of the top 10 emojis month-to-month (we ran the data up to the end of November). Looking at emoji rankings over time throughout 2025, a few trends stood out:
Sparkles ✨ maintained its #1 position consistently throughout the entire year. This emoji has essentially become the default way to add emphasis or visual interest to professional content across platforms.
The fire emoji 🔥 saw some interesting fluctuations, dropping in ranking during early 2025 before climbing back up. The rocket 🚀 was another that rose and fell throughout the year — it dropped from #2 in January to #9 in November (apparently folks weren’t quite as ready to launch as the year rolled on.)
Several emojis showed remarkable consistency, suggesting they’ve become established parts of professional social media language rather than trendy choices.
From feels to function
My key takeaway from all these numbers is pretty clear: emojis are functional, not just decorative or expressive.
As a writer, I find it fascinating how we’re adopting emojis for formatting, structure, and punctuation, as well as to convey tone.
A secondary takeaway: in 2025, our posts all needed a little extra ✨
More social media data
How to Grow on Social Media in 2026: A Data-Backed StrategyConsistent Posting Means 5x More Likes, Comments, and Shares: StudyReplying to Comments Boosts Engagement by 5-42% on These Major PlatformsDoes X Premium Really Boost Your Reach? An Analysis of 18M+ Posts
