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From friendly smiley faces to cute peaches, emojis are a staple part of many of our daily messages.
Now, eight new emoji have been confirmed for version 16.0 of the Unicode Standard.
This includes a harp, a shovel and a splash, as well as a face with bags under the eyes.
Although users will have to wait until next year to be able to use them, the new emoji have already generated quite a stir on social media.
“Representation matters. Thanks team Unicode,” one user joked, referring to the new face with bags under the eyes.
From cute smiley faces to cute peaches, emojis are an integral part of many of our daily messages. Now, eight new emojis have been confirmed for version 16.0 of the Unicode standard.
One user took to X (formerly Twitter) to express their excitement over the new face, joking: “Finally, I feel so seen.”
The latest emoji were confirmed by the Unicode Consortium and include a face with bags under the eyes, a fingerprint, a splash, a tuber, a leafless tree, a harp, a shovel and the flag of Sark, an island in the English Channel.
“Unicode version 16.0 has been released!” the Unicode Consortium tweeted.
‘We brought the total number of characters to 154,998!’
The inclusion of the Sark flag comes as a surprise because, as the Unicode Consortium admits, it halted the inclusion of any new flag emoji in March 2022.
At the time, Emojipedia cited the “transitory nature” of many flags and the “challenges of including some identities and excluding others.”
Keith Broni, editor-in-chief of Emojipedia, said: “This policy remains in place, although at the time of this policy announcement, Unicode highlighted how more national and regional flags could emerge.”
“Representation matters. Thanks team Unicode,” one user joked, referring to the new face with bags under the eyes.
The new emoji will begin rolling out over the next few months and throughout 2025. However, several users have already flocked to X (formerly Twitter) to express their excitement for the ‘face with bags under the eyes’ emoji.
Another excited user added: “The perfect response for every interaction in Slack, no matter what.”
The new emoji will begin to appear over the next few months and throughout 2025.
However, several users have already flocked to X (formerly Twitter) to express their enthusiasm for the “face with bags under the eyes” emoji.
“I finally feel seen,” one user tweeted.
Another added: “The perfect response for every interaction in Slack, no matter what it is.”
And one joked: “Finally an emoji that reflects my permanent mood.”
ARE EMOJIS RUINING THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE?
Emojis may be a fun form of communication, but they are destroying the English language, a recent study by Google has revealed.
Smiley faces, hearts, thumbs up and other cartoon icons, rather than words, are the preferred method of communication for teenagers, who are considered the worst offenders when it comes to poor grammar and punctuation.
More than a third of British adults believe emojis are the cause of a decline in the use of language, according to a study commissioned by Google-owned YouTube.
Emojis were first used by Japanese mobile phone companies in the late 1990s to express an emotion, concept or message in a simple, graphical way. Now, Twitter feeds, text messages and Facebook posts are full of them.
Of the two thousand adults, aged 16 to 65, asked their opinion, 94 per cent thought English was in decline and 80 per cent cited young people as the worst offenders.
The most common mistakes made by Britons are spelling errors (21 percent), closely followed by apostrophe placement (16 percent) and incorrect comma use (16 percent).
More than half of British adults are not confident in their command of spelling and grammar, according to the study.
Additionally, about three-quarters of adults rely on emojis to communicate, in addition to relying on predictive text and spell checking.
The use of emojis has infiltrated our culture to such an extent that the Oxford Dictionary’s “Word of the Year” in 2015 wasn’t even a word: it was the tear-stained face emoji, proving just how influential these little graphic images have become.
They were first used by Japanese mobile phone companies in the late 1990s to express an emotion, concept or message in a simple, graphic way.
