Emojis help kids communicate abuse
by Hope King
May 28, 2015
Abused Emojis is
a new iOS app and keyboard that aims to help kids and teens communicate
difficult situations through images.
The idea was developed by Bris, a Swedish non-profit which manages
a helpline for children and teenagers.
The organization says the app is intended to reflect and extend
the kind of work Bris does.
"Every day we have contact with hundreds of kids through phone,
chat and mail conversation,"Bris explains on its site. "Many of
the problems that children face today are stigmatized ...The Abused Emojis app
is a symbol for our work to make children talk more freely about their
situation."
The set of 15 emojis are based on existing icons, each revised to
portray different types of physical and psychological harm.
The hear-no-evil, see-no-evil monkeys, for example, are upset. The
praise hands have red cuts across the wrists, and various figurines have
bruises or Band-Aids on their faces.
Mark Davis, president and co-founder of
Unicode, says his personal opinion is that the Abused Emojis campaign seems
like a "very worthy cause."
Some of the Abused Emojis "could be represented already in
Unicode, using what are called 'joiners,' which is how Apple portrays diverse
families. Others would require new characters, and would have to go through the
selection process, Davis
The Unicode Consortium is releasing a set of 41 new emojis in
June, and it has selected 38 emoji characters as candidates for next year's release. The list of
those candidates is not final.
Bris communications director Silvia Ernhagen said that being
included in the larger set of Unicode emojis "would be a good outcome to
broaden the range of feelings," but emphasized this wasn't the app's main
goal.
The iPhone app launched on the iTunes App Store a little over a week ago and has been
downloaded tens of thousands of times.
According to the developer, Abused Emojis is already the third
most downloaded free iOS app in Sweden
Some users have been concerned about letting the app have
"Full access" to an iPhone's keyboard. Third-party apps can retrieve
information that is typed on a device this way, but Bris says it does not
collect, store or transmit any
personal data from users.
Structure
of the Lead:
WHO- kids and teens
WHEN- May 28,
2015
WHAT- abused emojis
WHY-
WHERE-not given
HOW-
Keywords:
1. stigmatized: 誣衊
2. revise: 修改
3. portray: 寫真
4. campaign: 活動
5. Consortium:
聯盟
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