Mike Nudelman / Business Insider
Emoji has been around since 1999, but these winky faces and seemingly random characters have only fairly recently caught on.
A lot of that is thanks to Apple's iOS 6, which allowed iPhone owners to easily integrate emoji into their keyboard for the first time in 2012.
Now, it seems that teenagers don't use words any more.
"We usually just talk using emojis," 18-year-old Hope R. told Business Insider last year.
With the help of Emojipedia - yes, that's a real thing - we can now tell you what some of the most mysterious emoji mean.