By Rebekah Anne

Emojis have been around for years and shockingly, they are more powerful than we can imagine. Emojis were first formally created in 1999 by Shigetaka Kurita. At the time they were designed with pixels, and very simple compared to what we see now in 2022. In the early days, emojis were used to express feelings in text and email. Now, we use emojis for communication. Sending one emoji can start or end a conversation, but how does it affect our daily life? Well… emojis hold a lot of expressions within them. 

When texting with people, tone can become lost in translation and that can be a very frustrating thing for anyone but using emojis can help translate that tone to another person. When expressing sadness you can add an emoji to help show someone that you are feeling down, the same with happiness, confusion, love, and even flirting. 

In the Ted Talk “In defense of Emojis” given by Jenna Schilstra she speaks about BRIS a Sweden child helpline organization. Schilstra talks about how BRIS created an emoji keyboard for children in abusive and domestic violence situations, emojis included children’s hurt, self-harm, and more which all include feelings that are not easy for a child to express to anyone.  And that keyboard app was downloaded more than 10,000 times in just the first week alone, being the third most popular free IOS app in Sweden. Showing that a keyboard for emojis could be something that could very well save a life. 

There are other people who have experimented with using emojis to help kids with special needs express their emotions and learn emotions. Shows even more evidence that emojis aren’t just a way to show your BFF that you miss them or that you think the TikTok they sent you was funny, but that emojis have the ability to change how we interact with people and how we as a society communicate. Emojis are ever changing and I have no doubt in my mind that emojis are going to continue to be used in more and more helpful ways.