It’s a wonderful time to be alive. The technological advances being made are amazing to witness and be a part of. But as a result of all of these advances, we are also facing a new crop of challenges. Communication between different age groups has become increasingly difficult. For older generations, there’s a struggle to understand the new, slick, casual language of the younger generations. And the youngest in our communities are growing up without the structured eloquence of earlier generations. In fact, it has almost become a foreign language to them. Emojis have played a big part in this. And with World Emoji Day around the corner, it only makes sense to take a look at the way emojis are affecting our communities.
How have emojis changed the way we communicate?
Some seem to believe that people over the age of 30 shouldn’t use emojis. However, there’s no changing the fact that it is becoming more common for people of all ages to throw emojis into their written communications. If they’re so popular, there must be something to them, right? Let’s take a minute to look at the value of emojis in written communication and how they have changed the way we communicate with one another in daily life.
Emojis are faster than words
While emojis as we know them now were created in Japan in 1998, they didn’t really take off until the 2010’s. And ever since then, people have relied on them more and more to communicate quickly and efficiently. Emojis have the wonderful ability to convey emotion when words fail us. They can convey a mood without a word and give the recipients a glimpse into our current emotional state, good or bad or blah or what-have-you.
Emojis communicate underlying emotions
Emojis give us the ability to creatively blend written and visual communication. This is especially appealing to the carefree youth of our communities. It is freeing to not be tied down to mere words when there is bubbling happiness from the joys of a summer day, or deep sadness from the common heartbreak of dashed hopes or cancelled plans. In a time where communication is constant, being always bound by words can make communication unbearable.
One of the difficulties of writing is giving the reader an idea of what tone the message is to be read in. Emojis have taken care of this issue for the most part. When they are properly paired with a message, the reader immediately knows whether the writer is serious, sad, joking, etc. Since we often find that we need to be quick and efficient with our messages, emojis give us the ability to cut many words and save time.
How can your mobile home community use emojis?
Now that we have discussed some ways emojis have changed how we communicate, it’s time to have some fun! So here is a list of fun ways you can begin incorporating emojis into your mobile home community.
- Start using emojis in your community emails. A boring email about the neighborhood watch group can easily become a little more lively with the help of some emojis.
- Include emojis in your event fliers for your mobile home community events.
- Host an emoji costume party. Offer a prize for the most creative emoji costume there. You could even encourage people to make puns or silly sentences by standing together in different orders.
- If your mobile home community has an online forum, start using designated emojis to categorize your topics. For instance, use an ice cream emoji at the beginning of each post regarding your community’s monthly ice cream socials.
- Pick an emoji for each month of the year. Try to make all of your community happenings for that month tie back into the emoji of the month in some way. As an example, you could use the sprout emoji for the month of April to signify spring and new growth. Host a community event for planting saplings around your mobile home park to make it more beautiful. But be creative! August could be the month of the alien emoji, and you could host a community contest for the best cardboard spaceship. You could even let the youth of the community vote on which emojis to use each month.
Just be careful to understand the emojis you are using around your community. While even businesses are learning to incorporate emojis into their communications, many emojis are open to interpretation. Some have double meanings that are not so savory. Best to know what you might be saying to avoid getting into trouble.
Don’t lose touch with traditional communication
We’ve seen that emojis can be used to enhance our discussions with others. But at the same time, we should not forget that they can also degrade language. We can easily rely on emojis and lose our ability to communicate emotions with just words. So as we take a day to celebrate the fun and creativity that emojis bring to our daily lives, let’s not forget to use them in moderation. Expanding our language is wonderful, but losing our ability to speak and write with depth and intention would be a tragedy to our culture.
Preserving our language through the changes happening all the time is just one way we prepare the world for the next generation. Looking to do more? Check out this list of ways you and your mobile home community can help the planet for more ideas.
About EZ Homes Design Team
