IF YOU are part of the 99 percent avid Facebook users, you might have seen the new care emoticon, with a smiley tightly hugging a heart. The new reaction has found its place between the “love” and the “haha” emojis.
It comes at a time when the world is locked down due to the ongoing coronavirus disease (Covid-19) pandemic.
This makes “care” one of the first additions to the list of reactions since it was expanded from a simple “like” button back in 2015 to give people more human, empathetic, quick responses to posts.
The care emojis are already accessible on Facebook’s main application (the emoji face embracing the heart), while the new reaction appeared on Messenger (in the form of a pulsing heart.) You can see the new heart by pressing on an existing reaction to change it, or by creating a new reaction to a chat.
But nothing is as simple as it looks, not even this ‘care’ reaction. As soon as, FB launched it, it invited a sea of memes online, making people burst out into laughter.
However, this relatively speaking is a pretty small gesture: sending an emoji is not putting food on the table, nor giving someone a guarantee of employment, nor curing anyone who is directly affected by this awful sickness.
But in the light of Facebook being one of our go-to support networks today, ever more important as people live in isolation, this is another way to make it more beneficial and in-sync to the kind of empathy we all need right now.
Stay active until our next chat!