Kids going for emoji lungula

Shigetaka Kurita, the Japanese who created emojis in 1999, probably never imagined they would be such a big trend in Kenya.

Never mind, Shigetaka Kurita could be mistaken for singetaka kuwa mjinga in Kikuyu!

Anyway, emojis have become part of daily phone text messages.

You probably just sent one a minute ago. By the end of today alone, six billion emojis will have been sent worldwide, according to Apple.

In any case, who wants to labour with typing long words when you could sum it all up with precise and more expressive hearts and happy faces?

 The G-mail generation has taken to using emojis to express anger, love or shock. Use of coded symbols as a language has however taken a different turn.

Kenyans of an older generation invented Sheng, a street language that was a corruption of Kiswahili, English and not a few Kikuyu, Kamba and Luo words, to conceal conversation from parents.

“Emojis can be used as a coded language, which allows young people to form small speech communities. With these, they can exclude anyone who doesn’t fit the bill, in this case parents,” explains Dr Bob Mbori, a senior lecturer in the Department of Language and Literature Education at Masinde Muliro University of Science and Technology.

“It also allows them to flex their creative muscles, which can be seen in the ways they choose to interpret standard images in various ways,” Dr Mbori added.

Dr Mbori adds that, “Sheng used to perform that function, but because of the complex, ever-changing dynamic of Sheng, emojis seem to have taken over.” And now, most children are using emojis in ways their spying parents can’t suspect, even if they accessed their phones.

While adults use emojis to communicate faster and more directly, children are using this playfully coded language for more sinister motives.

Communication experts are sounding warning bells to parents as these seemingly sweet innocent symbols have hidden meanings when in the hands of children.

Denise, a 19-year-old student at Daystar University says that, “I have always had a smartphone ever since I was young despite protests from my parents. Almost all my friends owned one, so I would have had access anyway.”

Denise had to put a password in her phone to keep off her parents. But this is not fool proof.

There is a certain code she uses to communicate with her friends that comes in handy when they want to talk about guys, for example.

Words like batman refer to a man who likes big asses, while emojis like apples and pawpaw are used to describe girls.

Indeed, that seemingly blameless face, fruit, hand gesture, animal and other symbols, can mean three or four different things.

“I use three or four emojis every five messages because they always help me sail through texting. But I don’t always believe that they truly represent the feelings of the person on the receiving end when they reply,” said Sharlene Juma, a photographer and spoken word artiste who recently turned 18.

“The way I use an emoji is different from the way my parents use emojis. Whereas my parents would see a peach as just a healthy fruit, my peers use it depict buttocks on WhatsApp, Snapchat and Instagram,” said 14-year-old Joshua Nyagudi who recently sat his KCSE exams.

Jacinta, a single mother of three, agrees that it is not possible to monitor how kids use their phones these days.

“With the way technology ‘rushes forward’, it is very hard for us as parents to keep up,” she says. “Personally, I try as much as possible not to be left out. When my kids were very young, I set up a strict code of communication that they had to adhere to in the house. As they grew up, this carried on to their interactions with others.”

Jacinta understands the risks posed by social media to kids. She trusts that her children are responsible enough to use it appropriately.

“I did not let my kids have smartphones until they were old enough. They had access to phones, but only the mulika mwizi, which I used to call or text them. My eldest daughter owned her first smartphone after she finished Form Four.”

Instruments such as Emojipedia, Emoji Translate and Emojisaurus can be used to translate the meanings of emoji into words because emojis can also be used to commit crimes.

 In the US for instance, police and courts are grappling with how to handle emoji communication after a 12-year-old girl in Fairfax, Virginia, was this year charged with threatening her schoolmate after posting a message on Instagram with a gun, knife and a bomb emoji that partly read: “Meet me in the library Tuesday.”

The post was later taken down. But concerns only increased after Facebook released a series of five face emojis that people can use to react to posts instead of the monotonous like button.