Emojis make our lives a lot easier. From actually serving to represent how we’re feeling to being the punchline to an inside joke, emojis has revolutionised how we text, tweet, and communicate. With that, Adobe just released a trend report that surveyed 5,000 respondents from across the United States in order to characterise how we use emojis.
How are emojis helping us understand each other?
In their findings, Adobe disclosed that 88% of emoji users in the U.S. reported feeling more empathy toward someone if they use and emoji, while 75% felt more connected to people who used emojis. Meanwhile, 92% of emoji users agreed that using the emoticons can help them communicate across language barriers. These findings make sense as tone can easily be lost across text messages — ask anyone that uses “lol” these days, they’re not actually laughing out loud, they just don’t want you to perceive them as threatening.
Do emojis accurately represent people?
Unicode made a huge leap in 2015 by expanding the skin colours you could choose to represent yourself via emojis that feature actual humans and body parts. Despite this, 2 in 5 users said that their identities are not reflected in the current emoji offerings and age, race/ethnicity, culture, and disability were the top four categories U.S. emoji users would like to see expanded.
Do people really understand emojis?
For the most part yes, except for Upside-Down Face (🙃), Cherries (🍒), and Cowboy Hat Face (🤠) — the latter of which is the most misunderstood out of the three. Yeehaw! This isn’t the end of the world though, since 50% of respondents claimed to use emojis differently than their intended meaning, with Gen Z being the most savvy to differing emoji meanings. 74% of Gen Z users say they use a given emoji for a different meaning, versus 65% of Millennials, 48% of Gen X, and 24% of Boomers.
How do people use emojis to express love and attraction?
Adobe reported a top three and a bottom three emoji for flirting. The survey found that Face Blowing a Kiss (😘), Smiling Face with Hearts (🥰), and Smiling Face with Heart-Eyes (😍) would make someone appear more likable while Pile of Poo (💩), Angry Face (😠), and the less-then suggestive Eggplant (🍆) would make someone appear less likable. This is noteworthy since 72% of users will send an emoji in a conversation with someone they are interested in or flirting with — just steer clear of the eggplant.
Interestingly, Adobe found significant differences in how males and females use emojis. 76% of males reported using emoji more during flirting as opposed to the 68% of females that claimed the same, while 27% of men claimed to have ended a relationship with an emoji compared to 15% of women.
The body of emojis is constantly changing and expanding with the addition of new pictographs added every year. With that, they are becoming an indispensable part of our digital lexicon, workplaces and love lives.