You’re one year old if you use emojis: teens no longer put emoticons in their conversations

The researcher compared the use of emoji in conversational messages between adults and adolescents. To do this, he almost analyzed 103,000 messages whatsapp and close half a million wordsand concluded that emoji use among young people aged 12 to 16 is now in use in both group and individual conversations.

In WhatsApp messages, text -79% of analyzed messages contained only text, audio and video. 19% including exclusively for these multimedia contents.. This expert concludes: “Young people always want to distinguish themselves, and the absence of emojis is just one of a kind. protest or reaction before millions of these symbols used by their parents. It’s their way of differentiating themselves.”

“Avoid the Silence”

In contrast, adults use emojis much more often, especially when interacting with groups of friends. Actually, a 23% of your messages consists only of emojis and 14% for text and emojis.

“Adults, they cherish in your communication and avoid silencebecause they are the elements that are ready to quickly react to a video or meme sent to the group and thus recognize the effort made to keep the conversation active and the relationship between its members,” explains Pérez.

The difference is that teenagers replace about 83% of pure text, while adults only replace 40%, according to the study. According to the UPV researcher, these data Contrasting with the results of previous studies This was conducted by other authors who noted that young people used more graphic elements in their communication due to the “innovative nature” of their interactions. However, it now seems that the innovative thing is not to use them.

more stickers

For teens, emphasizes the study’s author, “yellow faces are nothing newthey were already there when they started using their cell phones, their parents and elders use them but they are not their thing. For them, emojis are elements that emphasize love towards the people around them. they are not necessary when they communicate with these people.

However, there are differences among the young people themselves, because according to Pérez, men are more innovative. create stickers because they want to “show off their technical skills”. Instead, girls use longer and more colorful messages than boys who are “correct”. In fact, the men even claimed to use the phrases only “to talk to girls” or “”.because my girlfriend asks me“.

epidemic product

Another issue that the researcher emphasizes is that when it comes to communication, young people use electronic devices to chat even if they are physically close. “This may be a product of what you’ve suffered during the pandemic, because in moments of social development locked for a long time and the way to communicate was through mobile devices”.

For Pérez, this isn’t necessarily a negative thing, but rather “another way to communicate” and rejects “parents’ fearmongering.” “We shouldn’t see it from our adult perspective. They had no choice.” According to him, this form of communication can only be harmful if adolescents do not adopt this method. form of personal communication that “many practice”.

invasion of privacy

Another difference in the communication of today’s adolescents is that “for them Calling is a violation of privacy“That’s why they tend to put the phone on silent. Many say they have no communication, but of course they do, even more than we do, but it’s a different way and you have to accept and understand that,” she says. researcher.

The author believes that by observing these communicative behaviors of young people, we can “get an idea of ​​what digital communication will be like in the years to come”: with more modes, but less yellow faces“.