My toe-curlingly embarrassing faux pas with an aubergine emoji... and other tales from 25 years of the emoji

Believe it or not, emojis are now 25 years old. And over that time, we’ve come to accept them as a type of everyday language. 

Everything from the humble smiley to the laughing-with-crying face helps us to communicate more effectively over text. You could say, emojis are the body language of the digital age.

But new research, published earlier this year by scientists at the University of Ottawa, showed that while many older folk recognised the icons, they were unclear on the appropriate context for their use. They also found that emojis are used in very different ways by those of different ages.

Oldies, of course, still consider them a comparatively new form of communication whereas teenagers have never known a world without them.

In the 25 years of the emoji, we’ve come to accept them as a type of everyday language - even the body language of the digital age

Emojis were the brainchild of Japanese software developer Shigetaka Kurita, in 1999. The word comes from a blend of two: ‘e’ for picture and ‘moji’ for character.

Given the limitations of the rudimentary displays on early brick-like phones, Kurita designed 176 unique pictures portraying simple concepts such as the weather, moods and foods. The emoji was born.

A few years later, the California-based Unicode Consortium turned them into the small yellow faces which are now so ubiquitous across our devices.

It wasn’t actually until 2011, though, that emojis became widely popular. That was the year the software giant Apple adopted them on their iPhones, quickly followed by all the other major smartphone manufacturers.

So, as the emoji turns 25, just how does each generation use this extraordinary new shorthand that we seemingly can’t live without?

The Gen X

By Sarah Vine

Sarah Vine

Well, you learn something new every day. I always thought the word ‘emoji’ was an abbreviation of ‘emotion’, since the main purpose of emojis seems to be as a shortcut for expressing feelings, reactions, desires etc. I stand corrected.

Despite my generation’s reputation for overuse, I remain somewhat conflicted about the little buggers. I don’t hate them - but every time I use one, I’m conscious that another piece of the English language croaks.

My favourite, which I am guilty of using far too much, is the rolling eye emoji. The teenagers get that one a lot. That and the gritted teeth one - a sort of visual ‘eek’ which just seems so very British, not least because it reminds me of Wallace in Wallace and Gromit. It also seems to offer the only sane response to most things these days.

My other favourite is the ‘Emunchi’, aka the one that looks like Edvard Munch’s The Scream. That’s been doing quite a lot of heavy lifting lately, what with the world going insane and all. I’ve also recently discovered what I call the tee-hee – little red cheeks with a hand in front of its mouth. No idea what it means (probably something deeply inappropriate); but I like it.

'My favourite, which I am guilty of using far too much, is the rolling eye emoji. The teenagers get that one a lot'

That said, it’s only relatively recently that I’ve become comfortable with using emojis. For a long time, I thought they were childish, trivial, demeaning even. But then I’m a person who deploys full punctuation in my WhatsApps, a habit that my children tell me marks me out as antediluvian. Cue dinosaur emoji.

I don’t care. Perhaps because I grew up in an analogue world, where writing letters was a normal occurrence and people still spoke in whole sentences, there are still many instances where the use of an emoji just feels wrong. They say a picture tells 1000 words - but emojis will only ever be one-note expressions, cartoon feelings unsuited to the real thing.

Major life events – disasters, death, tragedy in general, but also celebrations, weddings, important anniversaries: these can’t be reduced to an amimated yellow dot. I don’t doubt that here to stay, and that their numbers will only increase; but at the end of the day they will never be a substitute for the real thing.

The Boomer

By Dominic Midgley (62)

Dominic Midgley

Ever since David Cameron humiliated himself in front of the world by signing off text messages to a female friend with the abbreviation ‘lol’ in the mistaken belief it stood for ‘lots of love’, I have treated any use of cyber shorthand with caution.

And has there ever been a genre more calculated to trip up the unwary than the array of emojis made available to every smartphone user?

Imagine signing off the news you are preparing a supper of melanzane parmigiana, that Italian delicacy involving what the Americans call ‘eggplant’, with an aubergine emoji and then learning from some Gen-Z’er, bent over in tears of laughter, its true meaning.

(For the uninitiated, the denizens of the internet have deemed this entirely innocent vegetable to be of phallic appearance and often use it as a suggestive icon when sexting.)

Then there’s the fat-finger issue. When you stray into the emoji zone on your phone, you enter a world of infinite possibility and woe betide anyone whose forefinger hits the wrong symbol and then presses ‘send’ without double-checking.

'For the uninitiated, the denizens of the internet have deemed this entirely innocent vegetable to be of phallic appearance and often use it as a suggestive icon'

'I restrict myself to a strictly limited range of symbols, such as the thumbs up emoji'

I was engaged in a perfectly innocent WhatsApp exchange with a female contact when it was suddenly punctuated by a rainbow unicorn with hearts for eyes emoji.

Nonplussed, I consulted the internet to learn that it refers to ‘a bisexual woman who sleeps with heterosexual couples’.

Moments later came the agitated message: ‘I definitely didn’t mean to send the unicorn. Fat fingers.’

As a result, I restrict myself to a strictly limited range of symbols, such as the thumbs up emoji.

But even that’s a faux pas, apparently. A poll of 2,000 16 to 29-year-olds by insights firm Perspectus Global three years ago found that 24 per cent said the thumbs up emoji was only used by people who were ‘ancient’ or ‘past it’.

There was some good news, however. The poll also found that the most popular emoji, across all age groups, was the laughing face crying tears of joy, appreciated by 45 per cent of respondents.

It just so happens to be my favourite, too.

The Millennial 

By Flora Gill 

Flora Gill

When I was a teen in the noughties, text speak was like a second language that only millenials knew - and it was cool to be fluent.

We had ‘GR8’ and ‘C U L8R’ - both of which are now defunct, of course.

Today, while some slang has lasted like OMG or LOL, I don’t think any millennial is throwing numbers in their words. Instead we’ve moved on to emojis.

But I think most of us, rather than using the full library of images available, have a select few we utilise over and over.

This is unlike the generation above us who seem addicted to those colourful images. If they type a word and a suggested emoji comes up, they can’t help but swap it in, making reading their messages akin to decoding hieroglyphics.

'I will send a thumbs up when I can’t be bothered to reply, a heart when I’m showing love, and quite often the flamenco dancing lady to celebrate'

I will send a thumbs up when I can’t be bothered to reply, a heart when I’m showing love, and quite often the flamenco dancing lady to celebrate. I’ll also whip out the laughing crying face emoji - which I’m aware immediately ages me as a woman in her thirties but I think that’s so much better than the few millennials I know who desperately try and mimic Gen Z by trading it out for a skull.

When it comes to emojis, let’s be honest - it’s better to just own the age you are and text accordingly.

The Gen Z 

Lucy White

By Lucy White

While these other generations have welcomed emojis, the same can’t be said of Gen Z.

With floods of kissy faces and hearts regularly decorating my Grandparents’s text messages, and shopping lists from my mother comprising of just a series of food icons – I spend more time decoding messages than I do replying to them.

So no wonder Gen Z have turned their backs on these gouache figures - we prefer the effortless chic that can only be conveyed by an ‘x’.

As fashion and digital trends flashback to the 90s with film cameras and low-waisted jeans making a comeback, so has text speak. Gen-Z favours a simple ‘colon’ and ‘round bracket’ to convey a smiling face over a bright yellow cheesy emoji.

Whether it’s a conscious effort to distance ourselves from our predecessors, or a deep-rooted feeling of cringe anyone over 30 won’t understand, Gen Z use image emojis sparingly, and usually for genuine sentimental value or entirely laced with irony.

Because, and let’s be frank, there is nothing more awkward than when someone tries to express their condolences with crying emojis, only to select the ‘rolling with laughter’ face.

The Gen Alpha

By Connie Adams (11)

Connie Adams

After pestering mum and dad for months about getting a smartphone of my own, one of the things I was most excited about when they finally relented was getting my hands on the emoji buttons.

I’d seen friends who got phones before me use them in messages and I was itching to do it myself. I think the very first message I sent contained about thirty different emojis!

For me, emojis add some pizazz to whatever you are writing, but often for our age group they replace words altogether. The other day instead of writing ‘got to go’ I did a series of emojis instead: a pair of eyes, a stopwatch, a peace-out sign and a door.

I do think it’s interesting the way different generations use them. Sometimes it feels like my mum doesn’t entirely understand all the different possibilities available, because she only ever uses the same three or four emojis, usually smiley faces or hearts, whereas I love using as many as possible.

'My generation have also come up with some meanings for emojis that are very specific to us - for example a "getting your nails done" emoji means someone’s preppy'

My generation have also come up with some meanings for emojis that are very specific to us - for example a ‘getting your nails done’ emoji means someone’s preppy, and there’s an emoji of someone stroking the side of their cheek which stands for ‘mewing’, which is showing off the jawline.

What I would definitely find interesting is if there were new emojis for some of our slang, like ‘rizz’ and ‘skibidi’. For you grown-ups, rizz means a boy who gets all the girls, and skibidi means cool. They definitely haven’t got emojis for those yet, but when they do I’ll definitely use them – although those words probably won’t stick around for long.