when I was little if someone asked me if
you could have any superpower what would
it be
my answer was always I want to be able
to talk to every person in the world in
their mother tongue I grew up in Belgium
surrounded by languages and dialects
including French and Dutch which I have
spent years studying and while I haven't
acquired that superpower quite yet I
love that now I can talk to my Dutch
family and my friends around the world
in a common language this language lets
me tell my grandma that I really miss
her my friend in Spain that I hope she's
feeling better my boyfriend in Ohio to
not forget the tent for a camping trip
again whether it's a message to my
sister or a text to my boss I wouldn't
be able to say any of this as
effectively without the language of
emojis I'm sure some of you are also
avid emoji users because in 2015 92% of
the online population used emojis for
reasons like laziness efficiency and
enjoyment
so before you discount me as another
text crazed millennial unable to suffer
through the slings and arrows of
Shakespeare I want to show you why I
believe that there are some surprising
real-world benefits to emojis and while
they may be a trend they come from a
long line of powerful visual
communication that go all the way back
to cave dwellers the first written
communication began more than 40,000
years ago in the form of cave art the
earliest Homo sapiens drew beautiful
images of animals stars people and other
symbols these images may have had
religious or spiritual significance been
a record-keeping of their reality or a
product of pure artistic inspiration we
don't know as these ancient people
evolved so did their forms of
communication over the next few thousand
years some of these images were
simplified from a lust root of art to
pictographs which are symbols that
resemble what they signify and idea
graphs which are symbols that represent
an idea does this one look familiar
what about these maybe some ancient
Egyptian hieroglyphs over time systems
of symbols continued to expand to better
capture the ideas that were important to
ancient people and they eventually
evolved into fully developed systems of
writing in Mesopotamia in Egypt in 3200
BC and China in 1200 BC fast forward to
1990s Japan and we arrived at the
creation of emoji Japanese itself is
comprised of a set of very visual
characters called kanji each kanji
represents a word or phrase and they can
be combined to form more complex phrases
like this one where the character for
power and the character for ricefield
create the character for man in Japanese
e means picture and mo G means character
it's very fitting that a culture whose
language is a set of very visual
characters that evolved directly from
some of the original pictographs systems
created emojis that connect people
around the world through their digital
messages we all know that texting can be
ineffective sometimes if you send the
text okay are you being dismissive
passive-aggressive or just brief emojis
clarify and amplify your subtext so all
you have to do is add a smiley face and
your tone is perfectly clear let's just
say that my long-distance relationship
relies heavily on emojis of course the
argument can be made that by adopting
emojis we've exposed ourselves to
unknown risks and the possibility that
we've dumbed down our capacity to
express ourselves in the very near
future
Apple iMessage will be able to predict
and replace your words with a
corresponding emoji and I don't think
anyone would argue that this particular
version of Moby Dick recently entered as
the first-ever emoji book in the Library
of Congress and inspiring Li titled
emoji dick instills a lot of confidence
in the value of emojis
but emojis are transforming the way that
we communicate in surprisingly
beneficial ways and we're starting to
realize the potential power of using
emojis when words fail us bris a Swedish
nonprofit children's rights organization
that offers helpline services to kids in
need
recently developed an emoji keyboard for
victims of abuse and domestic violence
the keyboard contains images of abused
children
expressions of fear and pain like this
one which means I feel like crap and
even of self-harm these are extremely
challenging emotions and experiences to
describe especially for children in the
first week that it was available in the
App Store it was downloaded tens of
thousands of times and was the third
most popular free iOS app in all of
Sweden people on the autism spectrum can
have a hard time understanding the
nuances of language and tone like
sarcasm irony and some of those other
subtle nuances embedded in language
maybe they could benefit from using
emojis well a New York artist Genevieve
Belva recently performed a piece called
emoji autism facial recognition therapy
which examines the difficulty in
understanding the meaning of emojis
using her emoji recognition chart she
took an individual's interpretation of
an emoji and compared it with what's
accepted as the traditional
interpretation and used that comparison
to place that person on the autism
spectrum she then gave them tips on how
to improve their emoji literacy while
her piece is hardly scientific it opens
up the possibility that emojis could be
used not only as an alternate form of
expression but to make expression itself
more accessible her piece also shows
that like facial expressions emojis can
be hard to interpret
in fact over time they've developed
subtext and layers of meaning beyond
their literal significance it sounds
like a plan is a really enthusiastic
thumbs up whereas good thing I have a
thousand pages of homework is much more
sarcastic
this lady emoji was intended to mean
happy to be of service or how can I help
you
and as
being used to add a little bit of sass
or a hair flip to comments like I know
I'm a genius and this purple eggplant
which used to be an innocent grocery
item is now being used in more phallic
than culinary contexts while we don't
know what the impact of emojis will be
on our culture and language decades from
now advertisers and marketers are
recognizing that they're a valuable way
to gauge sentiments and behaviors
because they're replacing traditional
language emoji which is a company that
studies sentiment analysis around the
use of emojis found that emoji enabled
advertisements have a 20 time greater
click-through rate than the industry
average companies like Fuji and Domino's
have enabled tweet to order programs
where all you have to do is tweet an
emoji and your favorite food will be
delivered directly to you companies like
IHOP Hershey and Gatorade are updating
their logos to appeal more to today's
audiences they're starting to look
strikingly emoji like all of these idea
innovators have recognized the
attachment that we form to these emotion
depicting icons and they're capitalizing
on it
the benefits of emoji span from areas
like mental health to your sex life in
the world of online date and using
emojis can be extremely helpful because
you're gonna be better able to express
your emotions which means that a
potential date is going to be better
able to connect with you and what you're
saying so for the singles out there it
could be helpful for you to brush up on
your emoji vocabulary because match coms
annual singles in America survey found
that people who used emojis tended to go
on more dates there are two times more
likely to want to get married and they
have more sex
oh and the more emojis they used the
more sex they tended to have abundant
sex aside these are just some of the
benefits of emojis that we're beginning
to explore so what if emojis could be
used in early education as a way of
bridging language skill gaps we have the
tools let's let kids from around the
world connect with each other and learn
from others from different cultures and
backgrounds
maybe emojis could be used to help those
with learning disabilities be better
able to express themselves could
children in pediatric hospitals use
emojis to express their pain to nurses
and psychologists while we may never
fully understand the meaning behind
ancient cave art and pictographs what's
crystal-clear is that the visual
representation of feelings ideas and the
world around us is deeply embedded in
how humans have and will continue to
communicate children today are coming of
age in the most connected time in
history in the last two decades we've
given every person with a smartphone the
superpower that my young self
ambitiously dreamt of as these kids grow
up I can't promise that you won't still
see hyperbolic speech lazy language and
eggplant innuendos but moving forward I
have zero doubt that emojis will not
only give us the opportunity to leverage
an age-old system of communication but
will profoundly deepen our emotional
connections our understanding of people
from around the world will be enhanced
with every smiley face thank you