Have you ever been in a situation in which you had to express a certain idea but did not have the words or had a lot to say but no time to text? The solution is right there on your keyboard and it is called an emoji, a small icon used to express an emotion or idea.

Emojis were created in Japan in the late 1990s by Shigetaka Kurita to add emotion to boring text. Apple originally never intended for emojis to be used outside of Japan, but they were discovered by tech savvy people and started being used in the United States.

Apple displayed the newest emojis along with the release of iOS 11 which launched September 19. This new version of emojis is entitled Emoji 5.0, including 69 new emojis, 24 of these supporting 5 different skin tone variations. This update added more facial expressions, flags, food and drink, characters, and objects.

Personally, we like how adding an emoji can change the entire meaning of your sentence. For example, “I can’t wait *excited face*” or  “I can’t wait *rolling eyes*.” With this new update, there is almost nothing you cannot express with emojis.