Gen Z's interpretation of the smiley face emoji isn't new, although it's making headlines again. In 2021, the Wall Street Journal ran a whole piece on it and included insight from Gen Z .

Apple and Samsung brought nine new emoji to their devices this year with the releases of iOS 18.4 and One UI 7. The new emoji include a face with bags under its eyes and a splatter. The Unicode ...

To Gen Z, that classic smiley face emoji isn’t all sunshine — it’s more of a smug, side-eye smirk that can come off as passive-aggressive in texts like above.