On your laptop, hold the Windows button and the period or semicolon. Ta-da, the emoji keyboard! Scrolling through that seemingly endless list of tiny little icons, I sometimes wonder if there is anything this emoji keyboard cannot depict. Well, apparently there are a lot. Regular updates add new emojis to the list, with the most recent release Emoji 13.0 adding 117 new ones. Each update takes an incremental step closer to becoming a live representation of the society we live in. Society changes quite rapidly, and it is surprising to see how accurately and quickly emojis change and update to follow it. 

The start of emojis was in 1999 by Japanese artist Shigetaka Kurita. He created a new, attractive interface to convey information, such as weather, technology, and transportation, in a simple and easy way. It also allowed text messages to deliver the subtle nuances and emotions of spoken words. Because of this, emojis quickly became popular in Japan, and in 2010, Unicode adapted emoji characters, making them available on any device or platform. Since then, every new release of emojis has added up to this huge pool of colorful, tiny figures. Moving far beyond that classic smiley face, you can now express a much wider range of human emotions, including love, boredom, annoyance, excitement, curiosity, and anger. You can congratulate (🎉), compliment (👏), or encourage (👍) someone. Moreover, from food and nature to buildings to transportation, emojis now represent pretty much every aspect of our daily lives. It is more than just little illustrations — it is a new language that deserves a separate keyboard for itself. 

However, it has not been that long since this emoji vocabulary started to become a truly “universal” one. It was not a language that could be spoken by people of color, people with disabilities, or women with jobs. Only in the mid-2010s did people recognize the need for emojis to be able to speak for everyone.

In 2015, a milestone update introduced different skin colors available for every human-like emojis, such as facial and hand expressions. Now users can choose among six different skin tones — from white to brown to black, with the default color being yellow. While six skin colors are definitely not enough to portray the diverse racial spectrum of everyone around the world, it is significant that it recognizes racial diversity and strives toward equal representation of all of its users. Emojis with people wearing turbans and hijabs have also been added to represent cultural and religious diversity.

Emojis are being continuously and periodically updated to speak for social minorities. In 2019, disability-themed emojis, such as wheelchairs (🦽), guide dogs (🦮), and canes (👩‍🦯), were introduced to portray the experiences of people with disabilities. In light of the LGBTQ+ rights movement, family emojis with same-sex parents have been released, and the most recent update added a man in a wedding veil and a woman in a tuxedo as recognition for gay marriage rights. Flags for pride movement and transgender rights have also been included. No longer will anyone be excluded because of their gender identity or sexual orientation.

Another interesting trend is the increasing recognition of changing gender roles. The most recent 13.0 release includes emojis of a woman feeding a baby as well as a man feeding a baby. Raising a child is no longer perceived as a task only for mothers; the fact that dads also take care of children is not seen as weird anymore. Emojis that depict different jobs, such as police officers, firefighters, nurses, doctors, and more, now have both male and female versions. It reflects the shattering boundaries of jobs for men and women. We are progressing toward a society where men and women do not have defined roles in society.

Polar bears and seals to acknowledge climate change. Boba to follow the recent trend. And hey, who said Santa is a man? Now we have a gender-neutral Santa. So what next? Taking a peek at the next release of iOS emojis, it offers a mask-wearing emoji that is smiling. The current mask emoji (😷) looks very… ill. During these times when the world is combating COVID-19, masks are no longer for those who fell sick. It is a necessity, a responsibility that people should be happy to take on to protect themselves as well as the people around them. Emojis, indeed a live representation of society, will follow in parallel to speak for the people going through this COVID-19 era.