The Complete Emoji Texting Guide at Every Age 📱💬👶🏼👧🏼👩🏼👵🏼

I read an enlightening Rupert Murdoch publication where a mom kept sending phallic emoji to her son in doting texts, and he was understandably very confused. This is the kind of emoji faux pas that inspires coke-addled fantasies and cinematic prowess alike.

Rather than berate well-meaning emoji beginners with traditional advice, this tutorial attempts to bridge the generational gap by suggesting useful emoji texts for every decade of life. They range from humorous to downright depressing. Maybe we really do get wiser with age…

My initial inspiration came from Diana Hill’s incredible emoldji to better reflect what people over 50 would like to express using the medium.

Baby

Getting Away with Everything

😖 🍒 🍼 Bartender, more milk!

🙆🏼 🍭 HOLD ME!

😪 💤 🛏 😩 🤒 😭 Finally going to bed? Don’t get too cozy. I just started crying again!

⚠️ 💩 👬 💸 🤔 📓 Mess up potty training and you will alter the course of my psychosexual development forever

🎮 🕹📱Let me play with the iPad real quick

🕴 🍰🕯🕯🕯🕯 Can I have a valet for my 4th birthday?

📖 💉 😡 🔪 If you read me one more Brothers Grimm story, I’ll worship David Cronenberg

🔚 👶🏼 👧🏼 📸 💻 🌎 Posting embarrassing photos of me on Facebook qualifies as child abuse.

Teens

Prepare to Cringe

⤴️ 🆙 TURN UP!

🔪 🐝 SLAY

🙌🏻 👑 YAS QUEEN

👨‍👩‍👧 Fam

💅🏼 👯 💁🏼 Basic

🔥 💯 It’s lit!

👍🏼 ✅ 👌🏼 That’s ode gucci

🚬 🍃 💨 ✌🏻 🍍 🚀 🌁 We cyphed and got totally smacked

💬 🙇🏻 👻🖕🏼👋🏼 I curved him and dubbed his sh@#/Nope out!

💩 📲 Mupload that ish (middle-aged Buzzfeed writer variation)

👟 💰 Swag money (either going through midlife crisis: see 40s section, or 12-year-old boy on Instagram)

😜 👊🏻 🍔 🍕🍦 YOLO (ironically)

🙌🏻 🆒 On fleek! (ironically)

😻 💘 Bae (so 2013)

20s

More Growing Pains

🤓 🔩 📄 💩 🚽 😱 Screwed for finals

🆘 🍹🐸 😒 Come save me, I’m at the bar!

📺 👩‍❤️‍💋‍👩 🛌❓ Netflix and chill?

👊🏻🚪 👩‍❤️‍💋‍👩 ✂️ 👅 🌮 ‼️ Knock before entering #LUG

🍸🍸🍸💃🏻 😷 🚗 😵 😴 😳 Just barfed in my Uber

🙄☝🏼🔮 I told you so!

🐫 😈 😏 🐳 💦 THIRSTY

😋 🍕 📺 ME TIME/Cozy night in

🍑 👖 🤳 I’m feeling myself in these jeans

💳 🏫 🎒 💸 😣 🏦 Broke AF

🚷 🏠🖕🏻 I’m so over having roommates

🙇🏻 😩 💍 Everyone I know is getting married!

📑 👰🏽 👶🏼 💀 🤕 🤒 Am I gonna be okay?

30s

The IDGAF Years Part 1 #Adulting

👆🏽⬅️ 📱❌ 👨🏻 Swipe left!

📅 🔚 🤔 📝 😭 ➡️ 🤗 😄 👏🏻 Finally done with therapy. Ready to live my best life!

⛔️ 👶🏼🌱 🏥 👩‍⚕️ Mom, I’m not ready to have kids. My houseplant is dying!

👋🏻 🐴 🕳 Maybe I don’t need a Mr. Darcy?

📴🖕🏻🌎 No FOMO

🆕 🛋 Will you pick new furniture with me from somewhere that’s not IKEA?

💋 😻 😊 💞 I accept myself completely, just as I am. I accept myself completely, just as I am. I accept myself completely, just as I am…

🥃👨🏼 🎞 ➡️ 🍷👴🏽 📊 🐻 Trading vodka cranberry for a single glass of red wine and Theo James for a socially-inept accountant with dad bod.

💁🏻 💄 👚 👢 👛 👀 ⏰ 🖥 I’ve finally found my personal style after countless man-hours of browsing Pinterest and Instagram.

⛔️ 👗 👡 🌺 🌸 💐 🤳 📲 Coachella? I’m too old for that sh!#

40s

Behold the Midlife Crisis. Terribly Depressing!

📈 🤑 📉 It’s the economy, stupid!

👉🏻 🐕 🏈 Can’t teach an old dog new tricks!

💔 💍 😡 😫 😤 BRB marriage in shambles and everything is a lie

⛔️ 👁 🍽 🍷 🙍🏻 🚬 👒 Mother, I do not need a blind date. Particularly not with some verbally incontinent spinster who drinks like a fish, smokes like a chimney, and dresses like her mother.

🌃 🏡 💤 I don’t want to stay out too late

🛅 💼 💪🏽 More baggage than a 747/ Paris Hilton in the Riviera/a drag queen on a road trip

⛹🏻 🏋🏼 🚴🏼 Fighting slowing metabolism with a gym subscription

🛡 🗡 🌐 As I got older I looked at the world and I realised, we need armour.

50s

Midlife Survivor Aftermath

👴🏻 👵🏼💲🏪 🛒 🛍 💺 🚌 🚅 Senior discounts, here I come!

😼 😎 👵🏼 😉 Sorry, I’m too old! (translation: I don’t wanna!)

😜 👧🏻 👦🏼 😠 Youth is wasted on the young

👨‍👩‍👧 👍🏻 The kids are alright

💿 🎵 🎶 ⏹ 😒 Who in their right mind would listen to this crap?

👤 👀 🙅🏻 🍑 🔍 👨🏻 The invisible cloak of old age keeps sexual harassment away

🖕🏻🏡 🕵🏻 I don’t give a hoot what the neighbors say!

⏳ 🕑 🕓 🕖 🕘 🗓 Back in my day…

🙁 😬 🤷‍♂️😪 💭❓I wish I could remember that far back. What was your question again?

60s

Introspection and Arthritic Fun

👵🏼 🇺🇸 ✊🏻 The kids have families of their own now… Maybe I’ll run for president.

👣 😞 🤕 My arthritis is acting up again

🎰 💸 👪 🍬 BRB spending the kids’ inheritance money like there’s no tomorrow

😙 👨‍👦‍👦 🎤 🎸 🤦 How was your One Dimension concert, honey?

🌏 👥 🎨 💟 We’re all works of art in progress

👴🏻 👔 💼 Why should I stop working? If I do, I’ll die and it’ll all be finished.

👵🏼 🙃 The trick in life is learning how to deal with it.

👵🏼 📔 If you’re going to do a memoir, then it’s sort of at this age — in your late sixties or seventies — that you do it. I don’t understand people who do memoirs when they’re 20.

👵🏼 🤝 👩🏻 💝 The hardest period in life is one’s twenties. It’s a shame because you’re your most gorgeous and you’re physically in peak condition. But it’s actually when you’re most insecure and full of self-doubt. When you don’t know what’s going to happen, it’s frightening.

70s

Personal Transformation and The IDGAF Years Part 2

👄 😬 🙏🏻 Bring me my set of teeth, will you?

💭 💊 Don’t forget my memory meds!

👵🏼 👴🏻 🌏 😝 ⁉️ Let’s all get demented!

☀️ 🎲 🀄 📝 🏌 ❓ U up 4 a game of Backgammon/mahjong/bingo/golf?

👵🏼 💪🏻 😇 I’m not giving in to anyone else’s idea of how I ought to feel and look at 70. ‘Retirement’ is not a word I can even visualize.

👀 👥 🤷 👵🏼 You can’t control how other people see you or think of you. But you have to be comfortable with that.

😔 📚 We tell ourselves stories in order to live

👧🏻 👦🏻 🖕🏻 😈 If I’d had children and had a girl, the first words I would have taught her would have been “f*** off” because we weren’t brought up ever to say that to anyone, were we? And it’s quite valuable to have the courage and the confidence to say, “No, f*** off, leave me alone, thank you very much.”

80s

Achieving Digital Fame by Being a Cool Grandma

👵🏼📱📷 Time to reinvent myself as an Instagram celebrity!

🗣👂🏻🔇 Do I think what, hon?

🖥 🎭 I think most people are actors. There’s fakery going on, don’t you think?

👵🏼 🤘🏻 😝 ✌🏻 😎 I’m not an old person. I’ve never been an old person. I just do my thing.

👵🏼 👩🏻 🤳 📲 I think that high school kids and college kids and even grade school kids know who I am and want pictures with me. Why? Because they all want me to be their grandma! They also want to be like me when they get to be my age.

👵🏼 👴🏻 💖 👦🏼 👧🏻 Oh, I just love young people. I’ve got young people around me all the time.

👙 🍒 🆙 👆🏻 🙅🏻 🌍 ⬇️ If you’re over a certain age, you’d better keep your bra on because nothing’s worse than saggy duds

🚫 ⚰ 🙌🏻 🍾 😆🎈 🎁 🎉 🎊 I don’t believe in funerals. I believe in celebrating life, and showing people, while they’re alive, how much I care about them

90s

Social Disapproval and Bitter Snobbery

😧 🚰 💦 🌊 🍉 ☕️ 🚾 I suffer from dehydration and I know what awful things it can do.

🙅🏻 👀 👥 💭 🍳 🌯 I don’t look at social media or think about what I had for breakfast, it’s ridiculous.

⛔️ 🍷 🍣 🍿 🎥 ⌛️ I haven’t dated in 68 years.

👨‍👩‍👧‍👦 🤖 🙅🏽 Everybody today is like a robot, and I don’t want to be part of that.

🚓 🚗 🗽 🏙 ❄️ 🌨 ☃️ 🚶 🚶 🚶 🚶 If you walk down the street in New York in the winter, all the young ladies look alike.

🙎🏽📱 ➡️ 🐚 People seem to live vicariously through other people and other things, and that’s why they are all becoming empty shells.

😿 😕 🙍💀 You hardly meet anyone with a soul anymore

100

Becoming a Treasure Trove of Wisdom

📰 🎂 🤷 I don’t care about my birthday one bit!

👋🏼 💁🏽 Bye Felicia

⛔️ 🐱 💦⚱ Don’t let the cat piss in my ashes

☠️ ⚰ What is Iron Maiden, sweetie?

🔑 🏃🏻‍♀️ 🍆 My secret to a long life has been staying away from men. They’re just more trouble than they’re worth.

🏋 🍴 🍲 ❌ 💒 👰🏻 Get plenty of exercise, eat a nice warm bowl of porridge every morning and never get married.

😫 😴 🕐 🕒 🕔 🕙 I am tired and take naps as many times as I can

🍷🍫 I have always loved a glass of sherry and good food. My favourite is chocolate blancmange

👨‍👨‍👧‍👧 👨🏻 👩🏽 👴🏻 Having adult children makes you look 100 years old. I don’t want that.

Originally published at https://sophmoji.blog/2016/12/12/the-complete-guide-to-emoji-texting-at-every-age/