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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Psychol.

Sec. Media Psychology

Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1626509

This article is part of the Research TopicDigital Citizenship in the New Era of Social MediaView all 17 articles

Social anxiety and emoji use: Gender differences and the role of loneliness in digital communication among college students

Provisionally accepted
  • 1University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, United States
  • 2Temple University, Philadelphia, United States
  • 3Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, United States

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

ABSTRACT Emojis are one of the fastest growing forms of digital communication. However, sending texts can provoke distress. This may be particularly true for the 40% of emerging adults with clinically significant symptoms of social anxiety who often suffer from loneliness and altered communication styles. We hypothesize that to mitigate distress, higher levels of social anxiety and loneliness may be associated with greater emoji use when sending texts that could be interpreted negatively. We also hypothesize the relation would be especially pronounced in females given higher rates of social anxiety and emoji use in general. College students (N=191, 64% female, 18-24 years of age) read a series of vignettes with ambiguous texts and were asked to imagine sending them to a friend. They were instructed to convey positive meaning for half of the texts and negative meaning for the other half. Participants replied with a pre-written response and were given the option to send the response as is or add an emoji expressing a facial expression ranging from happy to displeased. Social anxiety and loneliness were assessed using established self-report scales. Multiple linear regression (R2 = 0.072, F(3,107) = 3.859, p = 0.012) demonstrated that women with high levels of both social anxiety and loneliness used emojis more frequently, and that this varied depending on valence. Specifically, women with high social anxiety used emojis more frequently when conveying positively valanced messages (β = 0.338, p = 0.003). No relations emerged between social anxiety, loneliness and emoji use in men (R2 = 0.044, F(3,52) = 1.844, p = 0.151). Although the effect sizes are small, these findings may inform the design of future studies on mental health and digital communication, increase understanding about gender differences in online communication style, and provide preliminary insights for the development of digital interventions that identify young adults who may most benefit from clinical engagement.

Keywords: digital communication, social anxiety, Loneliness, Emoji Use, computer-mediated communication

Received: 11 May 2025; Accepted: 03 Oct 2025.

Copyright: © 2025 Bendl, Cunningham, Hill and Jarcho. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

* Correspondence: Alexis M Bendl, abendl@unc.edu

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