Emojis define and restrict emotional range in communication

Emojis are a vital part of precise and direct communication in 2020, but there is a chance that their pervasive use is a nod to exactly what we are avoiding: Vulnerability. If emojis say it all for us, why use our own words and risk more than we need to? We commit to expressing an emotion or perhaps an atmosphere with an emoji, but the "why" of our feelings, and the core of what is going on internally, has no place in this clean exchange. Linguist Ben Zimmer explains that the prevalence of emojis makes sense; we live in a world of global connection and our loved ones might be far away, so we use emojis to fill in this emotional absence we sense in the written word. However, emojis cannot get us as far as our words, he warns, and we might think we can skip the emotional labor part of explaining our inner life. A sentence provides more context and demonstrates effort.^[1] According to Time, emojis might actually be allowing us to make snap judgments of each other without going deeper. Zoosk, an online dating platform, revealed data that men who have emoticons in their profiles receive significantly less messages while women with emoticons receive far more, which might unfortunately suggest that there is something less socially and culturally desirable about a man expressing emotional effort than a woman. Such assumptions limit communication and understanding.^[2] An article from Psychologist World suggests that emojis actually “restrict” our ability to communicate rather than enrich our words. We have only a few emotional emoticon options to choose from – so everything that doesn’t fall into those categories (complex, nuanced emotions) falls by the wayside. This does not mean we stop feeling whatever it is we are experiencing, but it might lose its place in expression.^[3]