Emotion Icons: Smile, Wink and Flirt without a Single Word

Before your smug and smarmy teen gets carried away about his texting prowess and how his is the generation that revolutionized communication, you might want to pass on a few bits of information about the emotion icons that will really pop his bubble and break his little teen heart. The next time that child rolls his eyes and thinks he is getting one over on you, these are the things that you need to tell him.

Number one: Emotion icons, also referred to as emoticons, have been around since the 19th century and were largely used in letters between friends and family to emphasize a point. Amusingly enough, there are Morse Code codes that were used to represent emotions, including one that was referred to as hugs and kisses but changed to mean something a little less boisterous.

Number two: This one may make your children cringe with embarrassment as well as teach them some history in the process, a double burn in the world of the teen. An 1862 speech written by Abraham Lincoln is thought to contain an example of an emotion icon. While there is some debate among the scholars about whether that was meant to be a real emotion icon or was rather just a coincidental typo, it can serve your purpose very nicely. How cool is Mr. Slouch and Mope going to feel if he is using the very same emotion icon that Mr. Lincoln did centuries ago?  Just imagine your child’s face when he digests the knowledge that Mr. Lincoln might have “LOLed” while writing a speech.

Number three: Perhaps the most famous and recognizable emotion icon is the smiley face, first used in 1963 to bump up the morale of the employees of a local insurance company. Simple and happy, the smiley face has been on everything from pins and stickers to clothing, notebooks and everything in between.

Number four: The teens in one country are not the only ones using emotion icons- there are other teens in other countries using their own versions as well. In fact, teens who are members of sites that connect them with teens from other countries might be better acquainted with that fact as they learn these from their international friends.

While most people simply use the little icons in the drop down menu, there is some advantage to learning your favorite emoticons using punctuation, letters and numbers.

There are times when you are just not going to get the right effect from those emotion icons that are there for you, so you have to make your own.