Hasti Group of schools
Dondaicha
Blog Number 296
SECRET MEANING OF SMART PHONE EMOJIS
Amit Kalley, the founder of the organization For Working Parents, has issued an urgent warning to parents about the secret meanings of smartphone emojis that could be used by children to convey “sinister” messages.
“The unregulated internet can be very dangerous for our children,” Kalley wrote on Instagram.
“This issue is too big to ignore and the Netflix series, ‘Adolescence,’ has brought it to mainstream attention.”
Forces and teachers across Britain have issued parents with a “periodic table of sinister emojis” said to be used by under-18s to surreptitiously discuss violence, sex and extremism .The emoji code, produced by education charity For Working Parents, outlines 60 symbols used to talk about drugs, violence, sex, self-harm, extremism and incels, meaning involuntary celibates.
Are the kids actually alright?
It’s important to remember this isn’t the first time we’ve seen concerns about generational communication differences reflecting larger social rifts. There are numerous examples in the media linking slang with issues of education, moral decline and even crime.
These attitudes have sparked debate over whether Australian schools should ban gen alpha and gen Z slang from classrooms.
While the frustration of parents and teachers is understandable, linguistic research shows aggressively negative attitudes towards teen language demotivate young people, exacerbate inequality and unnecessarily stoke intergenerational tension.
Emoji are highly context dependent. Much like gestures that are used with speech, we need to understand emoji in the specific conversations and communities they are used in. There is no consistent relationship between emoji use and inner emotional state that can be generalised across groups of teens or other emoji users.
Instead of fearing or banning emoji, we can try and understand how and why they are used in various contexts. And there are plenty of online resources to help with this.
EmojiPedia, for example, describes the pill emoji 💊 as potentially referencing medicine, drugs, or an awakening to a controversial perspective (the “red pill” beliefs referenced in Adolecensce).
Emoji are intentionally flexible and intended to be used creatively. In fact, Unicode, the organisation that assesses proposals for new emoji, requires that items encoded as emoji are able to hold multiple meanings.
Research has also shown different people react to emoji differently. One survey from 2018 found older men were most likely to view emoji as confusing and annoying, while young women were most likely to view emoji positively in communication.
Times change, and stay the same Intergenerational differences, and the tensions they evoke, are nothing new.
Back in the 2000s, parents and teachers voiced concerns that “netspeak”, with its creative punctuation and capitalisation, would diminish young people’s grasp of “proper” English. This did not come to pass.
Does this mean parents have nothing to worry about when it comes to their kids communicating online? Of course not.
Online misogynistic movements and red pill communities can bring great harm to vulnerable young people. Their growing popularity is something we all have to reckon with – but online language is not to blame.
Parents can’t realistically prevent the radicalisation of young men by simply referencing an emoji dictionary, nor can teachers stamp out the spread of misogyny by banning emoji and slang in classrooms.Instead, as one scene between Adam and his dad shows, we need to collectively shift our focus towards facilitating open conversations between generations.
By doing so, we can not only better understand our differences, but can reduce the feelings of social isolation that leave young people vulnerable to becoming radicalised.
please give your feed back ,remarks,suggestions and or commendation
academic world .wordpress.com 