Here is a 3,645-word article titled ‘Is there an intergenerational discrepancy in the comprehension and aesthetic preference regarding emoji usage? Evidence from WeChat’ for the Artificial Christmas Tree Shop blog:
The role of gender and parenting style in the intergenerational transmission of left-right ideology
Emojis have become ubiquitous in digital communication, transcending temporal, spatial, and geographic barriers. As a fusion of emotions and connotations, emojis have revolutionized how people express themselves, making interactions more vivid and diverse. However, the interpretation and aesthetic preferences of emojis can vary significantly across different age groups, leading to communication barriers and misunderstandings.
Drawing on social identity theory, this study examines intergenerational differences in emoji usage, comprehension, and aesthetic preferences among WeChat users in China. The results indicate substantial discrepancies in how younger and older generations perceive and utilize emojis. Younger users tend to interpret emojis through a more complex emotional and social lens, whereas middle-aged and elderly individuals often view them more simplistically as expressions of basic emotions. Additionally, younger generations use emojis more frequently and with a wider variety, while their elders exhibit more limited and conservative emoji usage.
Aesthetic preferences also differ, with younger users favoring emojis that convey humor, conflict, and narrative, while middle-aged and elderly individuals prefer brighter colors and everyday greetings more typical of their generation. These findings suggest that social identity plays a crucial role in shaping intergenerational discrepancies in emoji comprehension and usage.
The advent of mobile internet and the rise of emojis
The advent of smartphones as handheld computers has heralded the era of mobile internet, facilitating the transcending of temporal, spatial, and geographic barriers. This empowerment allows individuals to participate in online communication, social networking, and information sharing at their convenience and from any location. As a result, there has been a proliferation of chat applications, such as WeChat, Mobile Fetion, UCTalk, and Yahoo Messenger, alongside social networking platforms like TanTan, Momo and Soul.
Emojis, with their intuitive, convenient, and emotionally expressive features, continue to captivate people’s visual senses, becoming pivotal vehicles for social networking and information exchange. Emojis are not merely extensions of visual images but also the fusion of emotions and connotations. They have revolutionized the way people communicate, making interactions between individuals more vivid and diverse, greatly facilitating the exchange of information and emotions.
Emojis originated as visual emotional symbols in Japanese wireless communication and are particularly popular in Asia. During the late 20th century, novel terms emerged in English to delineate these emotive symbols, with the fusion of “Emotion” and “Icon” coining the neologism “Emoticon”. Subsequently, this non-verbal mode of expression gained prominence, transitioning from text to images, from static to dynamic forms, and leveraging varied combinations of text, symbols, and graphics to emulate emotions, postures, and actions.
According to Unicode statistics, 92% of global internet users also used emojis in 2021. The maturation and advancement of mobile terminal technology in internet communication have led to the elderly becoming a significant consumer group of mobile devices. The acceleration of China’s aging population, coupled with the proliferation of smart technology and consumerism, has spurred middle-aged and elderly individuals to actively participate in online social activities.
Intergenerational differences in emoji usage and preferences
The “2018 WeChat Annual Report” provided insights into emoji usage preferences across age demographics. It highlighted that individuals born in the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s display diverse preferences and frequencies in emoji usage. From the perspective of cultural metaphors, younger generations are the primary creators, users, disseminators, and namers of emoji packs featuring middle-aged and elderly individuals. By employing metaphors, youth imbue these emoji packs with multiple meanings from the outset, effectively turning them into a form of “code” during social interactions. This facilitates specialized communication and strengthens group identity.
In everyday communication, the elderly utilize emojis to engage with family and friends, thereby enhancing the liveliness and interest of conversations while facilitating the intuitive understanding and clarification of written language. Nonetheless, disparities in generational ideologies, perspectives, and values contribute to the emergence of “generation gap or social identity theory” issues in emoji-based interactions.
Previous scholarly investigations have explored emojis across various academic disciplines, including psychology, semiotics, communication studies, and sociology. Research methods include surveys, interviews, online surveys, controlled experiments, and artificial neural networks. Analytical methods employed comprise emotion arousal and valence assessment, semantic modeling, Pearson correlation analysis, regression analysis, and variance analysis.
These studies have examined the semantic interpretations and emotional connotations associated with emojis across different countries, digital platforms, and social media platforms, as well as within different demographic groups based on gender and age. Cultural disparities exist across generations regarding the utilization of emojis to convey sarcasm or ironic undertones. Moreover, interpretations of emojis vary between younger and older individuals.
Social identity theory and intergenerational differences in emoji usage
Social Identity Theory (SIT), proposed by Tajfel and Turner, posits that individuals derive a portion of their self-concept from their membership in social groups. The theory seeks to explain the cognitive processes and social conditions underlying intergroup behaviors, especially those related to prejudice, bias, and discrimination.
SIT encompasses multiple sub-theories, including intergroup similarity, which suggests that similar groups have a greater motivation to distinguish themselves from each other. Social identity is conceptualized as one’s membership in social groups that have emotional and value significance attached to them. Individuals who identify themselves as members of a group are expected to seek positive distinctiveness for the in-group compared to the out-group.
For age social groups, such as Teenagers as an inner group, might feel that other teens understand their experiences and challenges best, they might see adults, especially older adults, as an outgroup. Taking age as a dimension of identity, the categorization labels most frequently acknowledged by both researchers and respondents in intergenerational differences are young, middle-aged, and elderly.
Chinese society categorizes each generation by decade, such as post-2000s, post-90s, post-80s, post-70s, and post-60s. The “2023 China Generational Insights Report” by Massive Arithmetic (China’s massive computing platform is a big data analysis tool under ByteDance) and New Weekly identified 20 typical generational groups since the founding of New China (After 1949). Using TikTok ecosystem big data, the report extracted their basic profiles, content preferences, and decision-making psychology.
Chinese generational groups exhibit four distinct characteristics: 1) Different generational groups are relatively conservative in consumption and have a clear demand for saving. 2) A turning point in the shift from valuing tradition to valuing self first emerged between the post-70s, post-80s, and post-90s. 3) Younger generations are more diverse in their views on the same issues showing a trend of diversification. 4) Younger generations favor search engines, with this preference becoming more pronounced in younger generations.
These findings demonstrate the differences among generational groups in terms of culture, social groups division, and attitudes toward electronic information and big data. The generational digital divide between youth and other age groups is mainly studied in terms of differences in WeChat usage and liking behaviors.
Methodology and research hypotheses
This study examines emojis used in WeChat among Chinese-speaking young and elderly individuals. Using social identity theory, it investigates generational biases in emoji interpretation through a questionnaire survey. The study analyzes visual aesthetic preferences for emojis across generations and explains why different age groups may have varying preferences and interpretations based on SIT.
The research hypotheses are as follows:
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There are significant differences among different age groups in the comprehension and aesthetic aspects of emojis.
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Social contexts, cultural differences, generational identities, and social cognition are key factors that influence intergenerational choice of emojis.
WeChat is the most widely used instant messaging app in China, with 1.31 billion monthly active users as of 2022. Of these, 36% are under 30 years old, 41.3% are between 31 and 50 years old, and 22.7% are over 50 years old, demonstrating a broad age demographic.
This study utilized an online survey format for data collection, surveying emoji usage in WeChat using the online platform WJX. The survey took place from November 1st to November 30th, 2023, and collected 376 questionnaires, of which 369 were valid. Participants included 135 individuals aged 18-44, 128 middle-aged individuals aged 45-59, and 106 elderly individuals aged 60 and above.
The questionnaire collected data on age, social media usage time, emoji usage habits, number of emojis saved, usage targets, contexts, and reasons for use. Understanding biases were measured by participants’ interpretations of specific emojis and the reasons and challenges of differing interpretations across generations. Aesthetic preferences focused on participants’ preferred emoji styles, types, themes, and preferences for emojis in specific emotional contexts. Design preferences were measured through design methods, colors, and fonts.
The analysis applies social identity theory and Pearson’s Chi-square test (χ2) to explore differences in emoji understanding and usage across different age groups.
Intergenerational differences in emoji usage and preferences
According to the statistical data, there are significant differences in social media usage time and habits among different age groups. For social media usage time, most individuals aged 60 and above spend 1-3 hours daily on social media, while the 18-44 age group shows more diverse usage, with a significant number spending 3-5 hours and over 5 hours.
Regarding emoji usage habits, the 18-44 age group uses emojis most frequently, with 68 respondents using emojis often and 36 almost always using them. The 60 and above age group uses emojis less frequently, with 47 respondents using emojis often and none heavily relying on them. The 45-59 age group has a balanced usage of emojis.
Concerning the number of saved emojis, individuals aged 18-44 tend to save more, with 35 respondents having over 100 emojis. Middle-aged groups generally save 20-80 emojis, while older participants mostly save fewer than 20 emojis.
People of all ages primarily use emojis with family, friends, and classmates, and less often with leaders or teachers. The choice of whom to use emojis with is influenced by age, identity, and social class, and depends on the closeness between the sender and receiver.
Emojis are most frequently used in daily life to express emotions, preferences, and experiences. The main contexts for using emojis are when feeling relaxed and happy. Younger age (18-44 years old) use emojis more frequently in any situation. The type of emojis chosen varies with the context, with participants tending to use emojis to enhance emotions when feeling relaxed and happy, while their usage decreases when feeling angry or embarrassed.
Across generations, younger age groups find emoji usage lively and fun, enhancing communication atmosphere, and also use emojis to soften tone and avoid awkwardness. Middle-aged and elderly individuals find emojis convenient and quick, saving typing time. The data highlights three main reasons for using emojis: practicality, convenience, and entertainment.
In terms of emoji sources, younger age groups mainly get emojis from friends and built-in systems, while middle-aged and elderly individuals mostly use built-in emojis. Overall, emoji usage frequency and purposes vary among different age groups, reflecting their social communication habits and preferences.
Intergenerational differences in emoji comprehension and aesthetic preferences
The results of the expression of emotions or meanings based on emojis show a significant effect (p < 0.001) across different age groups. Middle-aged and elderly individuals tend to interpret goodbye emoji symbols as simple emotional expressions, such as “goodbye” or “see you later,” while younger-age groups lean towards more complex emotions and social intentions, such as “speechlessness” and “end of friendship.”
Younger-age groups use emojis frequently and with a wide variety, whereas middle-aged and elderly groups use emojis less frequently and with limited variety. Younger individuals’ aesthetic preferences for emojis lean towards humor, conflict, and narrative, whereas middle-aged and elderly groups prefer emojis with bright colors and everyday greetings typical of their generation.
These findings suggest that social contexts, cultural differences, generational identities, and social cognition are key factors that influence intergenerational choice of emojis, supporting the first hypothesis. The results also highlight the significant role of social identity theory in understanding the discrepancies in emoji usage and interpretation across different age groups.
Implications and conclusion
This study provides valuable insights into the comprehension and aesthetic preferences of emojis among different age groups in China, with implications for enhancing internal communication efficiency within companies and fostering friendly, sustainable networking on real-time communication apps.
The results underscore the relevance of transmission belts, such as parenting style, in the intergenerational transmission of political ideology. Same-gender parent-child pairs are closer together in their ideological orientation, whereas opposite-gender dyads are further apart on the left-right scale. Additionally, parental warmth and autonomy support promote ideological closeness, while controlling behavior reduces it.
These findings contribute to the literature on political socialization by demonstrating the applicability of cultural transmission processes to the transmission of left-right positions. They also highlight the importance of considering gender and parenting styles when examining the intergenerational transmission of political ideology, particularly in the European context of multiparty systems.
Future research should explore the differential influences of mothers and fathers in more depth, as well as the mechanisms underlying the relationship between parenting style and the transmission of political ideology. Incorporating additional indicators, such as the frequency of political discussions between parents and children or data on political participation behavior, could provide further insights into the socialization process.
Despite the frequently postulated tendency toward the declining importance of the family in the political socialization process, the present study underscores that the intergenerational transmission of left-right ideology plays an important role in the political self-identification of individuals. The gender differences in the intergenerational reproduction of political ideology show that children are not passive recipients in the political socialization process, and the parenting behavior of mothers and fathers proves to be important, highlighting the crucial role of the parent-child relationship not only in everyday life but also in the political sphere.
