Emojis are icons of different emotions and items used primarily in messaging. Emojis were first introduced in 1997 on Japanese mobile phones but did not gain popularity until the early 2010s. Over the years, more and more emojis have been developed to cover a broader spectrum of everyday communication. As of 2023, more than 92% of people use emojis in their everyday lives, according to the Unicode Consortium.
Before emojis, it was challenging for people to communicate emotions over text because of the difficulty of expressing tone solely through words. However, emojis have offered a solution by enabling individuals to convey their thoughts and feelings more effectively. They have allowed us to express, without words, the message we wish to communicate and the intended tone. This transformation in communication is significant as it has provided the means to add further context to messages and clarify the sender’s intentions. In essence, emojis have made it simpler for us to visualize the emotions and meaning a person aims to convey in a text-based conversation.