The Role of Emojis

Adam Sternbergh's "Smile, You're Speaking Emoji" accurately sums up the current space that emojis occupy in human communication. They are, so far, cute little cartoons that amplify conversation in a way that strictly text was unable to do for many years. Maybe these things have a bigger role in the rise of social media and phone usage than we give them credit for but, even then, they will never replace text.

Part of this comes from the fact that, as Sternbergh states, emojis are not really meant to be anything. They are just icons that we attribute meaning to, sometimes changing their form or goal of communication from one text thread to another. You would not send your mother half of the emojis you would send a close friend because she would be genuinely confused and out of touch towards some presumable undertones of irony or juvenile sexual innuendos. That is not to say our parents can not use them, as they often do, but they did not grow up within this new dynamic language-picture hybrid. Therefore, their fluidity in picking up cultural cues from emoji use is generally not as common or expected. As gross as it to type this out, I guess most parents are simply not fluent in emoji, so they opt for a more direct usage.

Emojis certainly have a promising future as they have become such a hit in a short amount of time, resonating with all age groups. However, until they form a universal language with concrete meaning, they will always show your age, so use them well. But really, who cares. We are talking about cartoons.