No One Under Eighteen Emoji
A crossed-out 18, marking content or premises restricted to adults.
Try No One Under Eighteen emoji
Edit the text, then change the size.
Meaning & usage
What does the No One Under Eighteen emoji mean?
A crossed-out 18, marking content or premises restricted to adults.
Cautionary with an obvious comic use. It labels adult content sincerely, but it is used just as often to say that something is far more intense than expected.
How to use 🔞 naturally
Age warnings, content labels and jokes about something being too much.
Reaction symbols work like visual emphasis: they reinforce a word, rate an idea or replace a short response. Repetition normally increases intensity, but it can also make a message feel more performative.
From standard to slang
The history of 🔞
- 2010
First defined as emoji
According to Unicode’s Emoji Versions data, No One Under Eighteen was first defined as emoji in Emoji 0.6, dated 2010. That label is retrospective: Unicode applied it later to the early mobile core it inherited from the Japanese carriers.
- Before the keyboard
Its visual roots
The numeral 18 crossed out in a red circle, a content rating rendered as a sign. It is one of very few emoji that encodes a legal threshold.
- Today
How its use evolved
Age warnings, content labels and jokes about something being too much.
Dates follow Unicode’s official Emoji Versions chart. Versions before Emoji 1.0 are labelled retrospectively. See the history of emoji.
In conversation
Examples of 🔞 in messages
These examples show the emoji in complete messages, where the words make its intended tone easier to read.
Fair warning, this episode gets grim 🔞
The queue outside was not for a family show 🔞
My reaction to that plot twist was not printable 🔞
When to use it
Using 🔞 clearly
Age warnings, content labels and jokes about something being too much. It lands as 18 plus emoji or 🔞 meaning when the rest of the message supports that reading, and it is the surrounding words that do the deciding — so in a sensitive, professional or cross-cultural conversation, say the thing outright as well.
Common questions
About the no one under eighteen emoji
What does 🔞 mean in a text message?
A crossed-out 18, marking content or premises restricted to adults. Cautionary with an obvious comic use. It labels adult content sincerely, but it is used just as often to say that something is far more intense than expected.
Is 🔞 always positive?
Not always. Its usual readings are 18 plus emoji, 🔞 meaning, adults only emoji, and irony or the relationship between the people can flip any of them.
Why does 🔞 look different on another device?
U+1F51E identifies the emoji; the picture is a font, drawn separately by Apple, Google, Microsoft and Samsung. Only the artwork changes, never the character.
How do I copy and paste the no one under eighteen emoji?
Use the copy button at the top of this page. 🔞 is a character, not an image, so it pastes into messages, captions and filenames as ordinary text.
When was the no one under eighteen emoji introduced?
Unicode’s Emoji Versions data first records 🔞 as emoji in Emoji 0.6, dated 2010. Early emoji version numbers can be retrospective, so this date describes its place in the standardised emoji set rather than the first-ever appearance of the underlying symbol.
Easily confused
🔞 compared with similar emoji
These sit close enough in meaning that people reach for the wrong one. Here is what actually separates them.
No One Under Eighteen or Warning?
⚠️ says be careful. 🔞 says do not look, and it is about audience rather than danger.
For developers
🔞 in code
Every value below is generated from the character itself, so it stays correct even where a file encoding cannot hold the emoji directly.
| Format | Value | When to use it | Copy |
|---|---|---|---|
| Unicode | U+1F51E | The standard reference. Use it to search a character map or a spec. | |
| HTML (hex) | 🔞 | For HTML and XML. Safe in files that are not saved as UTF-8. | |
| HTML (decimal) | 🔞 | The same reference in decimal. Both render identically. | |
| CSS | \1F51E | For the content property. Keep the quotes around the whole value. | |
| JavaScript | \u{1F51E} | A string-literal escape. Needs the u flag inside a regular expression. | |
| URL-encoded | %F0%9F%94%9E | Percent-encoded UTF-8, for query strings and API requests. |
Reference card
Emoji details
- Unicode
- U+1F51E
- Category
- Symbols & Reactions
- Also known as
- 18 plus emoji🔞 meaningadults only emoji
Keep browsing