EMOTICONS

Social media is all around us and it looks like it is not going anywhere soon! Wherever you go, to cafes or cinemas, to Canada or India, you see people looking down on their smart phones. They are either surfing on the net or checking the latest updates on the social media but most of the time they are chatting on messengers. It seems like texting is becoming more and more popular among people than having face to face conversations and they don’t even use letters to communicate. But what do they use then? Emoticons and emojis! A research shows that people from different countries tend to prefer using certain emoticons. According to research, people all around the world like using the most but French prefer . is the third most popular emoticons people love to use. Countries like Australia, France and the Czech Republic use happier emojis while Mexico, Chile, Peru and Colombia express sadness, anger and negative feelings with emoticons. The findings also show that people have disagreement about the meanings of some emoticons. Most people think that the meaning of the face with a straight mouth emoji is “not amused” while Australians think that it means “neutral”. Some think the fire emoji means simply “fire” but some think its meaning is “attractive”. There is agreement about some emoticons like “rain” emoticon. Everyone thinks that it means “rain”.