TikTok has become the preferred stage for content creators to highlight, not without high doses of irony and humor, the generational differences between boomers, millennials and centennials. However, A study reveals that these videos reinforce the negative and positive traits of the boomers. An ageist prism that, according to those responsible for the analysis, directly harms the mental health of those who suffer from it. Although one of the aspects that separates the members of Generation Z (born between 1995 and 2010 and also known as centennials) of the millennials (born between 1980 and 1995), at least in the universe on-lineis the length of the socks, —the centennials seem to have a special mania for ankle models—, is the use of emojis the reason why, in many cases, conversations between people of different ages have a bittersweet taste.
He emoji The thumbs up sign is paradoxically the thumbs up sign, which Gen Zers consider passive aggressive, while older people believe it is used as a sign of affirmation and agreement. What is worrying is that, according to the report, a study launched by Wavemaker Spainexcept for Generation Z, the rest love the emoji of the thumbs up, which is used to show agreement, so those who try to cancel it will not have it easy, despite its use, as a survey by Perspectus Global revealsmakes people between 16 and 19 years old think that those who wear it are “officially old”. Apparently, it is enough to show your ankles or put an innocent emoji Thumbs up so retinol was useless…
But how has its meaning changed so radically? Linguist Adam Aleksic explains it on his social networks. “Now it has a new function and it is used to stop a conversation. When you use this emoji at the end of a message, it seems somewhat arrogant, because it indicates that the conversation is over for good. That’s why some people believe that its use is passive aggressive. It wasn’t always like that, because people used it with absolute sincerity. Even a Canadian judge ruled that the thumbs-up emoji can be recognized as a valid means of sealing a contract.but when a gesture is used too much, it becomes insincere and loses its meaning,” he explains. He comments that this is precisely what happened with the laughing gesture, which ended up having a sarcastic tone, and now it is the turn of the thumbs up.
“The emojis, Despite having an initial meaning established by Unicode, they are pictograms that reinforce, complement or soften the digital textual conversation. Depending on the context, the segment of the public and the circumstances, these undergo a redefinition to adapt to the moment. For example, the eggplant has come to mean penis. The peach, ass. The reason is that the algorithms of many platforms censor these words and they do not exist. emojis explicit in substitution. However, among cooks or housewives an eggplant or a peach are still just that,” Pavel Sidorenko Bautista, Professor and researcher at the International University of La Rioja, tells ICON.
He says that Generation Z wants to break away from previous age groups. “The traditional smiley face, like the thumbs up sign, has a negative connotation for this group of users (something like a passive-aggressive image), so to express joy, even if it seems unbelievable, they use the skull.” He believes that the reason why Generation Z is so popular is because of the negative connotation that it has. millennials and the centennials They really use the emojis differently is that they were the millennials those who experienced its creation and implementation in the digital conversation. “They have accompanied the process and in many moments, they have been main promoters. However, when Generation Z begins to develop on the Internet, social networks are in full expansion. emojis They already had several generations and in that context there was still no convention on their aesthetics, so each technology and each platform developed its alternatives,” he says. centennials They break away from impositions of meanings, to use these graphic resources as they see fit. “Their use has already been despised in some specific media, such as WhatsApp, where the sticker (a simplification of the meme) better suits its idiosyncrasy,” he adds.
Although it might seem that understanding the meaning of the emojis It’s intuitive, but actually assimilating both what they mean and the subtext may not be so easy, as explained in ‘Emoji Speak: Communication and Behaviors on Social Media‘ (Bloomsbury Academic, 2023) Jieun Kiaer, there is no dictionary that can include all the meanings of emojis in a context- and register-sensitive manner. “The meanings of emojis are not limited to the emojis should be carefully considered according to the context. Although sending the emoji “While the thumbs-up gesture can be seen as a positive sign of approval in many cultures, it could be interpreted as an offensive gesture in Greece and the Middle East. Therefore, it is useful to have some cultural knowledge when using them,” she warns.
For his part, Keith Broni, the first “translator of “emojis” of the world, explained to Daily Mail the importance of taking into account people from younger generations. “In fact, someone from Generation Z might also see the face that shows a slight smile as highly performative and even slightly passive aggressive,” says the linguist. Although he believes that nowadays, using emojis In work emails it is appropriate, as they are considered indicators of emotional expression and help generate a sense of camaraderie within a relationship, it is vital to take into account generational differences to avoid a thumbs up become a bye definitive. If at some point they wanted to simplify communication, definitely, not even a smiley can escape the communication differences of different generations.
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