In "America Needs Its Own Emojis," Damon Darlin explains how the 722 emojis that the iPhone comes equipped with do not represent enough of American society culture. Darlin laments his inability to fully express his feelings through the use of emojis because the appropriate emoji symbols simply do not exist to fully communicate expressions that are common to American culture. In his article Darlin details how the main reason for the lack of Americanized symbols is that emojis were created by the Japanese for use by the Japanese in conversations that use Japanese cultural references. Therefore, the emojis do not easily lend themselves to use by Americans for use in conversations that make reference to American culture. Damon Darlin feels that Americans need their own emojis alphabet that is more diverse and represents the American lifestyle and culture. According to him, once Americans have a customized emojis system Americans will be able to better communicate through the use of emojis. While Darlin may be correct in his conclusion that current emojis system was not created to accommodate American conversations, he does not come up with a viable solution. Instead of simply creating a new entirely Americanized emojis alphabet that better reflects American culture, emojis users would most benefit from the creation of a comprehensive emojis system that reflects the many cultures that exist in the world. Such a system would sort emojis into country or region sections. The system would also have a feature that allows emojis users to update the emojis lexicon by inserting new emojis within the appropriate country or regional section.
The roots of smiley faces and emoticons go back to the 1880s, Shigetaka Kurita created the emojis in the mid-1990s and added it as a special feature to pagers that were popular with teenagers (Blagdon). Thus, emojis were created for a younger audience to include people between the ages of 13-19.