World Emoji Day: Emoji’s growing influence and challenges for older generations

There is no tone to text, and emojis can help clarify a message that could be interpreted otherwise. Somehow, a thank you followed by a smiley emoji is warmer than a simple written gratitude. Even aesthetically, emojis bring colour to text.

World Emoji Day

More than being the day before the birthday of a certain former prisoner turned president, July 17 is also World Emoji Day.

According to The Indian Times, the main objective of World Emoji Day is to promote and celebrate the widespread use of emojis, which have become an integral part of modern communication.

The first emoji came to life in 1998. Shigetaka Kurita created the first 180 emoji collection for a Japanese mobile web platform, and the concept spread from there.

Whether or not you think emojis are worth dedicating a day to, you cannot ignore their impact in modern day communication.

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Confusion that comes with emojis

Generation Y (1982-1994) and Z (1996 and 2010) have technology woven into their daily lives and are the ones who are more familiar with the use of emojis.

But if you’re in a WhatsApp family, work or community group, you’ve seen how Generation X (1965-1979) and the Baby Boomer Generation (1946-1964) have found it quite tough dealing with this form of communication.

My 66-year-old mother wanted to chastise a church member in a WhatsApp group because they didn’t react to her reaction to a message she sent in the group.

People above the age of 50 have many times innocently assumed that the peach emoji is simply about the sweet fruit or that an aubergine or eggplant emoji is an encouragement for healthy eating.

The Citizen’s Social Media Manager Ayanda Sitole, however, believes Mzansi’s senior citizens have warmed to the use of emojis.  “I think older people have embraced emojis, especially in South Africa because we are a country of people who have a great sense of humour,” says Sitole.

“They mostly use the simple ones like praying, dancing, laughing emojis, but there is a wider variety that they don’t use and that’s maybe because they don’t understand them or don’t have the vocabulary for them.”

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Growing influence of emojis

With almost everything going digital, the prevalence of emojis is something that will inevitably grow. “Emojis are very important, social media has made people shorten their writing to the point where some words have been shortened to single characters or abbreviations e.g. words like Ok has been shortened to just ‘k’, or LOL which is laugh out loud. So emojis are essential to keep communication short.”

“That’s why at The Citizen has added emojis to our social media strategy. SA news can be very serious, and at times depressing. Comedians use humour to make us laugh at ourselves as a country and as a people and to tackle really difficult topics. We have introduced emojis to our social media strategy to do the same,” adds Sitole.

The thought of a wordless world of communication doesn’t sound far off when you think about the growing influence of emojis. “A world or a time in our digital history where we only communicate with emojis would be awesome, it will help bridge the gap between people who are literate and illiterate and make it easy for everyone to communicate,” says Sitole.

But she warns “the down side to emojis is the very opposite of that where it means in a country where we have challenges with education, it will hamper young people’s ability to write.”

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