Considering the events of 2020, you may not have expected to see “happy” at the top of the list. It’s ahead by a big margin too.
With 5.7m feeling-happy mentions, there’s not going to be one single cause. But we did find something heartwarming – the most common phrase in this dataset was “happy to hear.” In other words, there were a lot of mentions expressing happiness for others and the events in their lives.
This suggests that even while many were experiencing one of the worst years of their lives, it didn’t stop people finding joy in good things happening to other people.
Looking at the year-on-year change, feeling-excited mentions saw the biggest increase, with feeling-scared and feeling-happy mentions following. One possible reason for all three is the slow steps we’re taking out of the pandemic; we’re getting excited about restrictions lifting, happy about seeing our friends and family, and scared that things could still go wrong.
What we’re possibly seeing here is hope laced with some trepidation, and we’re sure many of our readers will know exactly what that feels like.
One emoji, many uses
To finish off today’s bulletin, we’ll head into more light-hearted waters. We also looked at which emojis were the most used for each of the nine feelings we analyzed.