Wednesday marks World Emoji Day
Today marks World Emoji Day. The word Emoji means picture plus character in Japanese and has become the universal language for short messaging.
It's estimated that five-million Emoji's are sent daily on on Facebook Messenger by four-million Internet users online.
Founder of MySocialLife Dean McCoubrey, which is a digital life skills programme run in schools, says the day should be used to highlight how Emojis are used to communicate and to remind people of the importance of face-to-face interaction.
They express emotion, validate or shorten a sentence, often replacing words completely.
With billions of Emoji's sent daily on many other social media platforms put together, it has become a language of its own.
"In many cases, psychologists are saying that it's really good that people can express their emotions that way. The drawback though is if we're missing the real queues face to face. We've got 43 muscles in our face and 600 muscles in our body. If we're missing the queues that perhaps you're trying to tell me that you're in trouble or that you need help and I miss that because I'm just sending emojis, that's one key thing that parents need to look out for with kids and actually between friends," says Dean Mccoubrey.
Emoji users have been invited to join the celebrations of World Emoji Day using the hashtag #WorldEmojiDay.
— 'Smiling Face with Hearts' is the Most Popular New Emoji.
(Based on any emoji approved in 2018, plus statistics gathered from the @Emojipedia website.) pic.twitter.com/DUE0QvqRF8
— World Emoji Day (@WorldEmojiDay) July 17, 2019
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