😠Why So Much Hate Towards The 👍🏻 Emoji?😠

It is certainly true that attitudes toward emoji usage among young people are changing.

And there are reports that some of the most frequently-used emojis among younger users are considered old-fashioned and to be avoided.

Based on consumer research in 2021 on 2,000 16 to 29-year-olds, news reports claim that the thumbs up emoji is the number-one emoji that makes you look old.

While for millennials or Gen Y (people born in the 1980s), the thinking-face emoji means just that, thinking, but for Generation Z, or “zoomers," born between the mid-1990s and 2010, it seems, the emoji expresses worry or consternation.

So how do we explain just how and why emojis are changing their meaning? And more specifically, what’s up with the thumbs up?

While Emoji is not a language, and emojis are not words, emojis do often behave in language-like ways.  But the thing about language is that when a word or expression becomes overused, repetition results in the expression losing its meaning.

So are zoomers rejecting the thumbs-up because that’s what their parents use? I’d say that’s not what’s really up with the thumbs-up emoji.

Due to its constant use, the original positive meaning has increasingly become lost. And ironically, when a positive emoji is used to death, it starts feeling and sounding insincere. Not everything can be “great," and not everything deserves a thumbs-up emoji.

And so, the loss of the positive meaning has led to a reanalysis of what the emoji means. And what remains is the insincerity of use. Zoomers perceive the thumbs-up emoji as a hostile gesture because overuse of a positive tends to lead to insincerity, which becomes a negative.

It’s an unconscious process that happens gradually and across generations. And we only notice it when it's staring us in the face.

But given that zoomers are the world’s first generation to have been “born digital," growing up with smartphones, social media, and, yes, emojis, it shouldn’t surprise us that they are quite literally changing the face of the emojis us older folks love to (over)use.