Earlier this year, when the Coronavirus-led pandemic started to take over the world, Apple’s ‘Face with Medical Mask’ emoji became one of the most-used emoji on social media. Since its introduction with Unicode 1.0 back in 2015, the face of the said emoji had a not-so-happy expression, with a pair of closed, gloomy eyes depicting illness & sadness. However, with the latest iOS 14.2 beta update, Apple has swapped the grim-looking face of the emoji with a bright smiling face with rosy cheeks.
The “Face with Medical Mask” carries the previous face even in the official version of iOS 14. So, those who are using iOS 14.2 beta are the only ones who will get access to the new emoji, as of now. And if you send the new iteration of the emoji to your friends who are not running the latest iOS beta, the previous version of the emoji will appear on their devices.
Now, this might look like a very tiny change but symbolism does matter. The previous version of the emoji symbolized that wearing a face mask is depressing and depicted illness. However, if you want to encourage people to do something (that many are against due to their rights), you wouldn’t want to symbolize that the thing is sad or depressing, right?
