Emojis are helping revolutionize the way we communicate
Have you ever wondered how emojis help us realize our true moods?
Ah life in the texting era, our parents hate us and our grandparents are a little afraid of us. They see us talking and responding to them while our fingers move a mile a minute. We are having one conversation in person and about 4 others digitally. Our generation has learned to perfect the texting conversation so accurately that many of us actually prefer to text nowadays then to talk on the phone.
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If you think about it, texting and sending messages to express yourself protects our privacy from those around us. I’ve been to dinner on a double date where I texted my friend how disgusted I was by the guy the entire meal. He didn’t know. She kept me calm and we all had a fine time. Texting most definitely has its perks. Now texting essentially derived from online instant messaging. This is where the first set of smileys then emoticons now emojis also came from. The phone manufacturers are well aware what we as consumers need and then overtly what we want to have included in our communication devices. Apple and Android have sort of mastered this by adding their own versions of emojis available individually on the specific platforms.
You ever get a text emoji that doesn’t fully make sense? Then you text back like “Hey, what phone you got?” But isn’t it weird to not use emojis especially when conversing with friends or peers who have the same lingo as you do? It just makes the text story come alive. It captures the one thing technology is slowly destroying, compassion and the feeling of being in the present with someone else. Facebook in its past years has even added the feature to it’s status posting option. We can share what we are reading, watching, eating, and feeling. Sometimes you’d read a status and without the added mode behind it, it would of made no sense at all. It also enhances the feelings we all go through on a daily basis for example someone posts “I can’t wait for tomorrow” with the ecstatic emoji versus someone posting “I can’t wait for tomorrow” with the eye-rolling emoji. It is the same status but it surely expresses different moods.
We’re slowly moving toward a new way of expressing how we feel digitally with using alpha texts. Memes have taken over since the last few years many of which have ended up in Entertainment News stories and of course the viral promotion of trending content. I recently received a Kanye West meme with his face looking confused. The conversation was about someone who always wants to know what everyone is wearing the party. The context of the meme referred to my friend being just as confused as Kanye apparently. It begs the question however, how emotionally intact are we when sending emotionally filled messages using new forms of communication? Maybe the emojis amplify how we really feel. For instance, sending the devil emoji to tell someone you’ve done something horrible or maybe just mischievous probably makes you feel like what you’ve done is not as bad as it really is. “Just because you text L-O-L doesn’t mean everyone is laughing” is the best way to explain this emoji texting. Many studies show that due to use of mobile communication we have become desensitized. We aren’t as fully aware of the impact our words make anymore because of the sources used to deliver them.
