The history of emoticons can be traced back to the 19th century, where they emerged as playful combinations of punctuation marks used to convey emotions in written correspondence. For example, the use of the :-) sequence to represent a smile dates back to the 1800s.
Emotions, as we know them today, emerged in the late 20th century with the rise of digital communication. Scott Fahlman, a computer scientist at Carnegie Mellon University, proposed the first documented use of emoticons in 1982.
Emoticons quickly gained popularity across various online platforms and email services, becoming a ubiquitous feature of digital communication. Over time, they evolved to include a wide range of facial expressions, gestures, and symbols, reflecting the diverse emotions and nuances of human interaction.
In the 1990s, Japanese mobile phone users began to popularize emoji—a term derived from the Japanese words for "picture" (e) and "character" (moji). These small graphical icons expanded the expressive potential of digital communication, allowing users to convey emotions, objects, and activities through visual symbols.
Emojis and emoticons gained popularity, leading to standardized representation across platforms and devices. The Unicode Consortium, a nonprofit organization, incorporated emoji into its Unicode Standard in the early 2000s.