A smiley face is not always just a smiley face. Behind the yellow, wide-eyed emoji's smile is an intergenerational minefield. For many teenagers and 20-somethings, a smiley face popping up in a text or email is seen as something different.
HafeezatBishi, 21, started an internship (实习)at a Brooklyn digital media firm. She was surprised to be greeted by her co-workers with a bright smiley face. For Bishi, the welcome seemed dismissive and she sees the emoji as conveying a kind of side-eye smile.
The rise of the use of emojis at work, especially between remote teams during the pandemic, has created more misunderstandings than ever. People over 30 tend to use emojis to express what the images always did, but younger digital natives may use them to convey ironic meanings, or use them as shorthand for an entirely different thought. For instance, the skull and crossbones means death or danger to many adults, while many younger people say that to them it signifies laughing extremely hard-as in "I'm laughing so hard that I'm dying. "
Charlie Nelson Keever, a 31-year-old lawyer in the San Francisco Bay Area, spends a lot of time analyzing social media accounts to piece together legal cases. It was while researching narratives and timelines on a case that it dawned on her that young people don't use smiley faces to mean they are smiling.
She quizzed a Gen Z friend and was confused by the undertones which some emojis carry for that generation. On its face, the cowboy, a grinning emoji wearing a hat, can signify a special brand of quirky, giggly happiness. But for many in Gen Z, it means the sender is putting on a front, smiling on the outside while dying on the inside.
Keever feels she should have her finger on the pulse of how people communicate on the Internet. "There's nothing that makes you feel older than googling what an emoji means, "she said.
