“WTF is going on?” I send in the group message, as confetti, lasers and bright flashes accompany each text from my friends. I feel like my mom when she downloaded Snapchat and kept accidently sending pictures from that awkward double chin angle.
Have I grown up that fast? My teenage years ended two months ago on my 20th birthday, and I am already behind on the latest tech updates.
I long for the days when I knew every acronym to come across my AIM chat, the sheer number of them giving my conversations the look of a coded language.
It seemed as though weird combinations of symbols could accurately express intricate emotions of love, happiness, anger, laughter and shock that were too complex to put into words.
Ever since the addition of the emoji keyboard on iPhones — Android “emojis” are disgraceful knock-offs that I refuse to acknowledge — emojis have become integral to our daily lives.
They’ve taken the western world by storm, transforming Wal-Mart’s old, smiling mascot into a much more beloved icon you can’t go a day without seeing.
Emojis have also inspired a range of spinoffs: Kimojis, Bitmojis and even Chymojis — the side-eye emoji would be appropriate here.
iOS 10 has jumped on the textaholic’s love for iMessage accompaniment with a range of apps specifically for iMessage that allow you to add GIFs, stickers and secret messages, as well as play games, Venmo money and create a Tinder stack from your pictures. There is even an in-text app that lets you be an obnoxious grammar snob and overlay corrections on received messages.
With so much aggregated content available in iOS 10, tech-savvy students don’t even need to send actual texts anymore.
But are these once cool options now becoming passé? There’s a constant debate over whether this new form of communication, filled with CGI heartbreaks and Beyoncé hair flipping GIFs, is an evolution or degradation of language.
The pollution of handwritten messages, stickers and various apps and emojis is sometimes too much. Seven heart-eye cat heads are not always necessary.
There are some benefits to the new additions, though.
You can now politely respond to those pestering randoms you don’t actually want to text with Tapbacks, which allow you to send a range of preset thought bubbles through text, similar to a thumbs up on Facebook.
There is still beauty in the old emojis, too. A sassy hair-flip girl ensures your text to your frenemy comes across as more passive aggressive than actually mean.
Sure, the nuanced symbolism of iMessage modifications adds a lot of vapidity to our conversations, but that’s half the fun of iMessage. If you are not spamming your friends with animated kisses and vegetable emojis, you are missing out.
Ryan Thaxton is a 20-year-old sophomore from Monroe, Louisiana.

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