Rogers Diffusion of Innovations With Emojis

Everett Rogers is famously regarded for his Diffusion of Innovations Theory, which he published in 1962. The purpose of the theory was to decipher the way that people adopt new products, services, or ideas; It shows how people grow to use these new things. He categorizes people who take up these new innovations into five categories, and it applies to almost every situation. Here is how it applied to emojis:

The pioneers of emojis were the first people to use them. Emojis were easy for pioneers to take risks with jumping onto because there was already a demand for new expressive techniques online. Emoticons were being previously used, but as technology was rapidly advancing, new ways to be expressive when using online platforms emerged as well. 

Early adopters are the next group of people to help promote a new trend. This is a larger group of people, which definitely was the case when people started using emojis. The fun colors, multiple icons, and silly uses for emojis were key points for why people would be so enthusiastic about using them. They were new, bright, and poppy little pictures that were a very new concept online. They made messages less boring. 

This also applies to why the early majority would pick up on the emoji trend. They were simple and different from what people had seen before. Typing messages in only emojis became funny. People were able to develop new lingo that others who didn’t use emojis wouldn’t understand as well. 

People who weren’t using emojis were definitely missing out. No one wants to miss out on things that the majority of culture gets to experience, especially when something like emojis gains traction outside of online chat spaces. Emojis became an element of pop culture and were put on merchandise, they were seen on anything from clothes to water bottles to pillows. This is likely how the late majority of the theory was almost forced to get on the wave of emojis. 

Similarly, laggards (the last group of the Diffusion of Innovations) had almost no choice but to understand emojis, at least a little bit. Generations showed different patterns of online usage, like Gen Z who seemed to immediately promote the emojis, compared to the Baby Boomers who may have been more reluctant to the new technology and trends. However, for everyone to be able to communicate effectively, it seems as if the laggards needed to get on board with emoji usage to fully understand younger generations.
WIRED writes that about ninety-two percent of all people online use emojis. That is an incredibly high statistic, and it proves that the influence of emojis is no joke.