Your 🧠 On Emoji

Twenty years ago, Microsoft’s instant messaging platform added a new feature: dozens of little icons users could drop into their messages, conveying happiness, surprise, confusion, or a sheep. Gradually, then all at once, emojis were here: spreading from chat platforms to SMS, email, social media, and—to the chagrin of legions of teachers—even infecting school assignments.

For years, I was an emoji hold-out. Embracing the little, cartoonish images felt like transgressing against the virtue of words. To my linguistically traditional soul, raised on Jane Austen and Isaac Babel, emojis seemed cheap and unnecessarily revealing. I resented their creep into written communication, which had long managed just fine, thank you very much, with the alphabet.

But just a few years ago, after befriending a colleague whose texts were flecked with these symbols, I had a change of heart. Our daily banter thrived on the emotional zest that emojis added, and on the sense of connection they fueled. Timidly at first, I started to thread them into my digital discourse. Now they’re woven into my communication with many people in my life, punctuating a short note or standing alone as a single message, a or or as a full-stop reply. What’s surprised me most is the palpable joy these flutters of icon-based interaction have added to routine exchanges.

The effect is like a shot of meaning-making caffeine—pure emotional charge.

Valeria Pfeifer is a cognitive scientist at the University of Arizona. She is one of a small group of researchers who has studied how emojis affect our thinking. She tells me that my newfound joy makes sense. Emojis