Influence Of Emojis In Social Media

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The creation of the emoji can be traced back to Japan, specifically in 1999. However, emojis would not become a household name until 2011. In 2011, Apple’s iPhone (iOS5) provided users with an “emoji keyboard” which replaced the standard QWERTY keys with round yellow faces displaying a plethora of emotions. The word “emoji,” which bears a resemblance to the words “emotion” and “emoticon,” serves as the blanket term for digitized representations of facial expressions, products, and other common aspects of everyday life. Emojis have been highlighted upon by social media throughout the years, and have thus rooted themselves in millennial culture in a variety of ways. While emojis can often be mistakenly attributed only to texting, emojis have obtained much of their fame from their presence in other forms of media. For the majority of smartphone applications popular amongst the younger generation, emojis serve as a representation of one’s character or personality. For instance, Instagram and Twitter, two …show more content…

Today, there are approximately two billion active users on Facebook monthly, and 90% of them use emojis when messaging or posting (Oleszkiewicz et al. 2015). More than 60 billion emojis are sent through Facebook every day. In 2015, the Oxford Dictionary first announced the “Crying-Laughing” emoji as the “Word of the Year” instead of the typical string-of-letters word. Undeniably, emojis have become an indispensable part of online social networking. As a new type of “universal language,” emojis simplify our communication and combat language barriers, connecting people all around the world. Due to to emojis, we can now simply send a “smiley face” to express happiness, allowing us to forgo typing a whole sentence or learning another

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