By Kaeli Van Cott
STAFF WRITER
When it comes to the media, it’s important for all people to be represented, regardless of a person’s gender, sexual orientation, race or ethnicity. This holds true even with seemingly small things like emojis.
Although emojis might seem minor, the amount of people who use them is tremendous. Emojitracker.com shows the amount of emojis being used on Twitter in real time, and with just a quick glance, there were 698,494,519 of the crying out of laughter emoji being used on Twitter. These little smiley faces are more than just faces; they are a means of communication used on a day-to-day basis.
When the new emoji keyboard was released in a recent iPhone and iPad update, it included alternate skin tones for the first time ever. Any individual emojis that include people, from the girl raising her hand to the peace sign, now allow for the option to choose from a variety of skin tones.
This was a crucial step in properly representing all people. Previously, emojis lacked diversity. In fact, instead of the people being colored yellow like smiley faces of the past, they were mainly Caucasian. By making this decision, it seemed like Apple only cared about one group out of millions of people around the world. The decision to only cater to some seemed to promote cultural exclusivity.
When communicating to others, being represented by something as simple as emojis is comforting and can bring a sense of belonging, even if it’s not something most iPhone or Android users are actively thinking about. Some users have argued that the additions to the keyboard are unnecessary and were only created to appease those who may be sensitive.
These new emojis are necessary because inclusivity and acceptance are necessary in life. Not being properly represented in even the smallest of things is insulting. Small things can still have a huge impact, especially when it comes to communication.
Although this step toward becoming more inclusive is well intentioned, there are still some improvements that can be made. There are many skin tones represented with the new emojis, yet there are none that represent biracial couples. There are no emojis that wear hijabs or burkas. They do not represent everyone who uses emojis, and that needs to change.
The issue with these characters is that they have created little representations of race that had not existed in emoticons beforehand. Originally, emoticons were little yellow circles that did not define people, but instead expressed an emotion. The emergence of emojis and the decision to create Caucasian ones created the issue of selective inclusion.
When developing these additional emojis, the decision should have made to either represent everyone or represent no one at all. Yellow smiley faces could have worked, but if small representations of people are going to exist, they should represent everyone.
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