Here's why the red flag emoji is all over social media

From Instagram to Twitter to Facebook, the red flag emoji trend has taken over social media by storm. It's a new viral trend that has tweeters using the red flag emoji to signal opinions and behaviors that raise, well, red flags.

Twitter recently released data stating it's seen a 455% increase over the last week in tweets using the emoji with over 2 million red-flag-emoji tweets globally.

Definition of a red flag

Merriam-Webster defines red flag as a "warning signal or sign," or "something that indicates or draws attention to a problem, danger, or irregularity." The dictionary pinpoints the first usage of red flag as a noun dating back to 1748.

Thanks to the red flag emoji, Twitter users can just punctuate a tweet with the symbol, or even use a whole row of them to show something is troublesome.

Where did the trend originate from?

It is speculated the trend started among African-American Twitter users earlier this week who were talking about red flags in dating.

The tweet below is specifically credited as being the catalyst of the trend.

What initially started as a relationship centered discussion slowly morphed into other topics. People are tweeting opinions on sports, food, movies, music, politics and more that they find to be problematic. Not all the tweets are serious; many of them are jokes.

As usual Kenyans on Twitter (KOT) were not left out of the action. Here are some of our favourite examples of today’s 🚩🚩🚩 trend: