There's a new man in town. Actually there's a new man, and a new woman, a few new dogs, mermaids and mermans, unicorns, a whole species of monkeys, and Santas of every ethnicity ALL in this town. This town is not a place too far from me and you, and we probably visit this place fifty percent of the time we unlock our smartphones. Well, if you haven't already guessed it, this town is known as the emoji keyboard.
As we know, the term "text" embodies so much more than just the written word. It encompasses symbols, lines, speech, sounds, images, videos, gifs, and of course, emoticons. It's no surprise that emojis are a form of text, especially since it seems that these icons alone can practically replace communication with the written word all together.
An experiment was done by Caroline Moss, technology reporter for Business Insider, where she communicated via iMessage by using ONLY emoticons for five days. That means that every time someone sent her a text, or every time she wished to send a text to someone else, she could only use those tiny characters that are all too familiar to us.
While she reported that even though she was able to have many successfully conversations while only using emojis (especially when communicating with fellow millennials) it was surprisingly harder than she suspected it to be. She indicated that there were many missed messages, mixed messages, and messed up plans due to this single form of communication and interpretation. She experienced annoyance from her fellow texters, an increase in phone calls from people wanted to speed up or clarify the conversation, and complete confusion from her mother who has yet to adapt to this 21st century form of technology.
All in all, she came to the conclusion that the chances of emojis completely replacing the need to use written words is very unlikely. Although it's proven that emojis can indeed be used as a sole form of communication via text messaging, these little characters are much more valuable as a form of punctuation to add flair and emphasis to a message that a boring period, exclamation point, or question mark ever could. This study restored my faith in humanity that hopefully our need for verbal and nonverbal communication with traditional "text" will not go extinct despite our rapidly increasing obsession with technology.
So for now, I will continue to fan girl over the sassy dancing woman in the red dress 💃💃💃
Read about the study yourself here!
http://www.slate.com/human-interest/2018/05/when-youre-questioning-having-children-because-of-past-addiction-problems-and-more-advice-from-dear-prudie.html
As we know, the term "text" embodies so much more than just the written word. It encompasses symbols, lines, speech, sounds, images, videos, gifs, and of course, emoticons. It's no surprise that emojis are a form of text, especially since it seems that these icons alone can practically replace communication with the written word all together.
An experiment was done by Caroline Moss, technology reporter for Business Insider, where she communicated via iMessage by using ONLY emoticons for five days. That means that every time someone sent her a text, or every time she wished to send a text to someone else, she could only use those tiny characters that are all too familiar to us.
While she reported that even though she was able to have many successfully conversations while only using emojis (especially when communicating with fellow millennials) it was surprisingly harder than she suspected it to be. She indicated that there were many missed messages, mixed messages, and messed up plans due to this single form of communication and interpretation. She experienced annoyance from her fellow texters, an increase in phone calls from people wanted to speed up or clarify the conversation, and complete confusion from her mother who has yet to adapt to this 21st century form of technology.
All in all, she came to the conclusion that the chances of emojis completely replacing the need to use written words is very unlikely. Although it's proven that emojis can indeed be used as a sole form of communication via text messaging, these little characters are much more valuable as a form of punctuation to add flair and emphasis to a message that a boring period, exclamation point, or question mark ever could. This study restored my faith in humanity that hopefully our need for verbal and nonverbal communication with traditional "text" will not go extinct despite our rapidly increasing obsession with technology.
So for now, I will continue to fan girl over the sassy dancing woman in the red dress 💃💃💃
Read about the study yourself here!
http://www.slate.com/human-interest/2018/05/when-youre-questioning-having-children-because-of-past-addiction-problems-and-more-advice-from-dear-prudie.html
Love your blog post. I think the emoji communication trial would make for a great assignment for middle schoolers or high schoolers. It would be so powerful for them to see how much can and cannot be communicated this way. Pretty high engagement level potential too.
ReplyDeleteJen, I love your assignment idea! I think so many students would have fun with this!
DeleteKimberlee, I enjoyed reading your post! I have never personally tried to communicate strictly with emojis but I have heard of plenty people attempting to do so. Like you, I am relieved that emojis cannot fully replace our older, more traditional ways of communication.
ReplyDeleteThis post really made me think that just as using solely emojis was not the most effective, using just one form of text or literacy is also not effective. Instead, we must combine using text and emojis or use multiple literacies in order for our students to get a full understanding of things.
ReplyDeleteI always find it interesting when I am emailing with parents and they respond with emojis. I consider my emails to be formal, so I do not include emojis. I understand they are adding flare to their writing, but is it the right place? What are everyone's thoughts on using emojis in emails?
I never thought of emojis a "town" , but its so true! The study you discussed proved some great points in that multiple texts are often needed to create meaning. A post modern picture book has more meaning when the illustrations and text work together. They would be less easily understood if the text or the pictures stood alone. This is the same with text messaging on a phone. The emojis act as the pictures or back up for the text. I would love to try the emoji trial and see how creative I could get!
ReplyDelete1. I do love a good emoji as well...
ReplyDelete2. I cannot imagine communicating SOLEY through emojis though - no matter how perfectly the icon matches your exact feelings! We need words! Especially when you can't read the person's body language or hear their tone. This gets EVERYONE into trouble.
3. Then the world brought us BITMOJI....
As for emojis in emails - I do throw in an occasional smiley face, but that's the extent! I like for my parents to know that although I am a professional, I am also a human who is spending my whole day with their children with a smile on my face... ;)
Hi Kim your post made me laugh, I love the way you described the emojis as a town. I actually did the same thing as Caroline Moss, not for 5 days but for the day. I had a full convo with my friend to see how long we could go without saying anything but emojis. We successfully made it through the day and even managed to meet for dinner at the same time and place! It is crazy how much those little images can say. I mentioned in my discussion board that even with apps like Venmo no one actually writes what they are paying people back for they just put emojis. I don't think that town is every going away, but I am ok with it. :)
ReplyDeleteA picture says a thousand words, but apparently a thousand isn't enough. Great post!
ReplyDeleteI might have to try out her experiment.
Kimberlee - such a funny post. I laughed reading the first few sentences. From the experiment you mentioned, we learned how one form of communication isn't entirely effective. This can be applied to how we communicate with students in the classroom. All students learn differently, and require various forms of communication in order to succeed. This post was a great reminder of that!
ReplyDeleteKimberlee, I was also happy to hear the findings of this study! However, I have to admit that I often will use a text message for communication over a phone call. There have been so many times I have done this, where I often thought afterward that it would have been so much easier and quicker just to call. Hopefully we will never get to the point where we are all communicating through emojis, but I do love the sassy dancing one!
ReplyDeleteKimberlee, great post! Emojis are really everywhere! I will often find myself using emojis everyday in texts to add a little something! I do love them, but I am happy that they will not be replacing words completely! This post is so relevant to technology now because emojis are everywhere!
ReplyDeleteGreat post! I am extremely guilty of using emojis in all of my texting conversations. Like you said, I think they add more flair and emphasis into the conversation. Each smiley shows a different emotion that makes your texts more dramatic. Just because we use emojis, I believe that the communication world won't go extinct, this reminds me of the days we had AIM talking to our friends!
ReplyDeletethis was such an interesting post to read because I can definitely be found guilty of only using emoticons when texting. When emojis first made their debut I was in high school and there was a good amount of time that my friends and I would only using emojis to text and the craziest thing was that we actually knew what each other was saying. This would be such a fun assignment to give students to see what they come up with!
ReplyDelete
ReplyDeleteI have tried to only text in emojis one day and you are right, it is very difficult. There are not enough emojis to get ones point across which is way we need to use words and text. The emojis can only do so much but I agree with you as well that this will never take over a form of communication.