The wilting rose emoji: what its rise and fall tells us about gen Alpha

It was the fastest-growing emoji in 2025 – but if you’re older than 16, it has probably passed you by. Now, just as twentysomethings are catching up, it’s over In the 2025 hit Netflix show Adolescence, DI Luke Bascombe’s 13-year-old son, Adam, has to explain to his father the way his generation use heart emojis. “Red means love, purple: horny, yellow: ‘I’m interested, are you interested?

’, pink: ‘I’m interested but not in sex,’ orange: ‘You’re going to be fine,’” he explains. “It all has a meaning. Everything has a meaning. ” And those meanings are constantly evolving. Take the skull (), for example, which has come to be used as a reaction for finding something funny – a visual shorthand for the slang phrase: “I’m dead. ” Or the wilting rose () which was, according to Google data analysed by the New York Times ,…