If we compare January to April of this year to the same period in 2020, posts about how people felt were up 37%. To put that into context, the previous year-on-year change for that period was -0.5%.

It looks likely that the pandemic has caused us to be more open about our feelings online, as levels only significantly increased after it was declared and we slowly came to the realization that Covid-19 was going to be with us for quite some time.

The pandemic has been, and continues to be, an emotional time for us all, so it’s logical that we’d post more about how we’re feeling online. Couple that with social media usage increasing during the pandemic, and it’s even easier to see why these types of posts have increased so much.

It’s certainly not all about Covid-19 though. Feelings posts were at their peak the week of the US presidential election. Let’s just say 2020 was quite a year.

Breaking down the data by emotion

Let’s turn to the specific feelings we looked at. Here’s how they stack up in terms of volume and year-on-year change.

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.

Who knew a crying emoji could be so versatile? Let’s hope it’s used in its positive context even more this year.

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Stay safe,

The Brandwatch React team