When I saw the news that Apple would be releasing 217 new emojis into the world, I did what I always do: I asked my undergraduates what it meant to them. “We barely use them anymore,” they scoffed. To them, many emojis are like overenthusiastic dance moves at weddings: reserved for awkward millennials. “And they use them all wrong anyway,” my cohort from generation Z added earnestly. My work focuses on how people use technology, and I’ve been following the rise of emoji for a decade. With 3,353 characters available and 5 billion sent each day, emojis are now a significant language…
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