Who knew a yellow smiley face could change the way people communicate forever? A 25 year old developer, Shigetaka Kurita, who worked for NTT DoCoMo was the first person to create the “emoji” in 1999, this was drawn on a 12×12 pixel board. Kurita’s idea did not stay on that 12×12 drawing board it grew to be one of the largest things to hit the cellphone industry, the american company Apple Incorporated decided to take this small yellow blob and create a board known as the emoji board having a face for every emotion, a flag for almost every country, foods, sports, animals, and so much more.

The emoji’s could almost be seen as their own new language from one of the most recent films to hit the box office, Blockers,  states “all emojis have a secret meaning”, but is that really the case? The Sun gives a detailed list of what emoji’s mean, including, the silence face (?)is seen as “Be quiet or else”, the snowflake (❄) means that someone has cocaine, and finally the fire emoji (?) means someone looks hot.

News companies have run these stories countless times on the dangers behind these emojis for our youth, but many students say that this “code” doesn’t even exist. For example, freshman, Yellani Herdez, stated “ I mean there could be a secret language, but I don’t think that it applies all the time.”

Emojis are not only used by teens, but also by parents. Faith’s librarian, Mrs. Melanie Bowline, who is also a mother of four said, “ I use emoji’s all the time, but I know that some of them could mean something different to someone else.”. 

As a high school student I do not see the severity of these emoji’s, I think that people have a wild imagination and that can lead to wild phrases.  I don’t think that these are as harmful as people want you to believe that they are. I do not think that everything in life revolves around sex and drugs. When I send something with an emoji, I am not concerned with a double meaning. I send it at its face value with its original intention in mind. So keep ? (laughing) because life is too short to ? (worry) about what other people think.