It’s a common fact that spelling and grammar are key on your social media pages, as we highlighted in this blog, but in an increasingly digitised society, emojis play an equally important part in online communication. These small images added to the ends of texts and within social posts may seem trivial, but in a rapidly moving age, emojis have become trends themselves now, so it’s crucial to stay aware of their changing meanings to avoid falling behind.
Let’s start off with the thumbs up emoji 👍, frequently used by older generations to replace a worded message of approval or agreement. To younger generations like Gen Z and Gen Alpha, this seemingly inoffensive emoji suggests indifference, dismissiveness and sometimes even hostility.
If you’re curious to know why this generational divide exists, the function of emojis and which emojis you should use, read on.
Developed to make up for the loss of facial expressions, physical gestures and tone of voice when communicating digitally, emojis clarify meaning, express sentiment and tone, and reduce interpretive uncertainty. However, despite this, their interpretations differ because of age.
Research published by Frontiers in Psychology (2024) shows that older generations interpret emojis by their literal meanings and use them according to this, usually for emphasis, whereas younger generations tend to use emojis more creatively and ironically. This is likely because younger generations have grown up using emojis whereas older generations haven’t, so their meanings are altered because of different perspectives of how emojis should be used.
It’s not just age that has an effect on emoji interpretation either – research by Chen and Yang et al. has shown that gender and culture also has an effect on emoji comprehension, so it’s hard to know which emojis to use in the right context, especially if you’re a marketing professional! A classic example of an emoji that has different meanings between cultures is the thumbs-up emoji (👍) – in Western countries, it is generally used as a positive sign of approval, but in parts of the Middle East, it can be considered offensive, similar to showing the middle finger.
Because of fast-moving trends in emojis taking place on platforms dominated by younger generations, like TikTok, understanding what emojis mean relies a lot on shared knowledge, which can be alienating to those who aren’t as involved in modern social media. Also, because emojis act like trends themselves now, if you’re a business trying to build a brand image that identifies with younger generations, knowing which emojis you should use is crucial to solidifying your online presence.
Trending emojis have come and gone as quickly as just a few weeks, so who knows – this blog will probably be out-of-date in 6 months! Even so, it’s still useful to know key semantic shifts in emoji use and why they happen, and which emojis not to use.
We all know about eggplants and peaches, but there are far more emojis that have undergone a shift in meaning:
😭 – Crying face emoji – to a person who understands emojis literally, this emoji appears to convey extreme sadness and sobbing, but in actual fact, it has two meanings – it is most commonly used as a substitute for the massively overused crying laughing emojis (😂 🤣), but also as a way to express positive emotional overwhelm (similarly to how these emojis are used -🥹 🥺: a way to say “Aww”).
💀☠️ – Skull emojis – while these emojis used to mean literal death, their meaning has shifted to be another substitute for the crying laughing emojis, taking on a new meaning of “This is so funny that I’m dead”/”I died laughing.” The skull replaced 😂 through a process linguists call “semantic bleaching” — when a word or symbol is used so frequently that it loses its original intensity.
🙂 – Smiley face emoji – this classic emoji is a favourite of Boomers and Gen X, as to them, it displays neutrality and friendliness, yet to younger generations like Gen Z, it reads as barely concealed irritation and sarcasm.
🗿 – Easter Island emoji – originally an emoji depicting Easter Island’s famous stone heads, this emoji has shifted in meaning thanks to meme culture, often being used to represent ‘sigma’ or ‘chad’ archetypes due to its stoic appearance. If you don’t know what ‘sigma’ means, click here, and if you don’t know what a ‘chad’ is, click here.
🐐 – Goat emoji – thanks to the acronym GOAT (Greatest Of All Time), the goat emoji has become the ultimate compliment in sports and entertainment. Instead of representing actual goats, it’s now used to celebrate exceptional talent or achievement.
The meanings of these emojis are useful to understand if you are conversing with someone online, especially if said person is a different generation to you, as it is usually the younger generations using these emojis this way, so it’s easy to fall behind if you’re not up-to-date with what they mean.
As highlighted earlier, Gen Z and younger generations employ emojis more creatively than older generations. This list is an insight into some of the more creative uses.
🧍 – Person standing emoji – seemingly unassuming, this emoji is often used by Gen Z to indicate awkwardness, often in a humorous context.
👀 – Eyes emoji – this emoji is used most commonly to indicate curiosity, intrigue/gossip, anticipation or even ‘pervy eyes’. This is different to how it is used in more professional contexts, such as on social posts to tell the viewer to ‘Look here! 👀’, for example.
😂🤣 – Crying laughing emojis – these emojis, as discussed earlier, are widely seen by younger generations as markers of age, as they are typically used by millennials and older generations unironically, deeming them ‘uncool’. Because of this, younger generations have recently using these sarcastically/ironically in response to something that just isn’t funny to them, but may be funny to older generations.
💔 – Broken heart emoji – while most use this emoji literally, many people of the younger generations use it ironically, both as a form of mockery towards people who use it to self-pity, and to pretend to be heartbroken over an obviously insignificant event.
🥀 – Wilting rose emoji – this emoji arose in use by Gen Z as a direct result of TikTok trends, to replace the increasingly-‘mainstream’ broken heart emoji.
For some people, the intricacies of emoji use may seem unimportant. However, the use of an incorrect emoji can completely change the tone of the message you are trying to convey – for example, saying “My dog got run over yesterday 😭” could be interpreted that you find this really funny, so will evoke a reaction you may not have expected. For this reason, it’s important to understand what you are sending out.
Additionally, emojis are not universally interpreted, and the same symbol can convey positive, neutral, or even offensive messages depending on cultural context. In more professional contexts where emojis are used, such as in a professional WhatsApp Group where everyone in the group can see your messages, it’s important to know what emojis mean to avoid offending anyone in your cohort, as it could lead to complicated HR issues!
For instance, the OK hand emoji 👌 has a range of different meanings – in the United States and most of Europe, it signals agreement, but in Japan, it represents money (the circle formed by the fingers looks like a coin), and in Brazil, it’s an offensive gesture similar to giving someone the finger! In France and Belgium, it can mean “zero” or “worthless.”
This many cultural differences can get confusing, so being aware of them is crucial for international communication, whether in personal messaging, business, or social media. Knowing your emojis is important – you never know when it might come in handy!
One way that some people have combatted the gap in emoji knowledge is by changing their emoji use based upon their audience. For instance, when conversing with parents, young people may use different emojis to when they talk to those in their own age group. Usually, the more emoji-fluent person in the conversation tends to converge to meet the less fluent person’s level of knowledge, so in most cases, you can stick to the emojis you do understand rather than trying to use the ones that they use.
If you do not understand the intricacies of emojis, particularly in a professional setting, sometimes it might be best to steer clear of them altogether. After all, the last thing that you would want to do would be to accidentally offend a colleague who is more emoji-fluent than you are. It would be even worse to embark on a social media posting journey using emojis left and right and find yourself the subject of ridicule.
In this case, stick to what you know. You could either use the emojis that you do understand, or stick to the good old-fashioned method of using words to communicate with your peers!
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