Study Suggests Emojis are ruining the English Language
Study of 2,000 adults aged 16 - 65 finds that emojis are damaging the English language
A study commissioned by Google owned video sharing site Youtube suggests that emoji are ruining the English language.
The Telegraph reports that over 2,000 adults were asked what they thought about the current state of the English language - with over 90% believing there had been a decline in accurate English usage over the years.
Emoji Language Study Details
To add to this, four and five people in the study believed that young people were the main culprits. This coincides with a reported rise in popularity for English language tutorial videos; in fact, a Youtube spokesman indicated there had been a 126% increase in views for these types of videos.
The popular communication tool Emoji is used over 6 billions times a day and is one of the fastest growing languages in history. With new emojis being added all the time as well, the language continues to expand at an alarming rate. This year alone Unicode has added no less than 160 emojis to the language; in 2017, the consortium added over 230.
Experts Fear the Worst
Former Government adviser and chairman of the Campaign for Real Education Chris Mcgovern stresses that there has been a major decline in young people’s ability to use English over the years.
He said: “We are moving in a direction of cartoon and picture language, which inevitably will affect literacy. Children will always follow the path of least resistance.”
Adding to his argument even further, he comments: “Emoji convey a message, but this breeds laziness. If people think ‘all I need to do is send a picture’, this dilutes language and expression.”
While this study focuses primarily on the detrimental effects of Emojis, other researchers are focusing on the positive benefits. A study by Edinburgh University recently for example found that skin tone variations of emojis were being used positively, despite widespread fears that they would be used to promote racial hatred.
