Prior to the invention of emojis, signaling to a potential romantic partner that you’d like to have sex with them was a complex matter, requiring numerous notarized parchments bound with sealing wax, which you pressed with the signet ring around your penis. Fortunately, the Japanese invented the emoji, enabling modern lovers to send a little cartoon eggplant instead. Sex has now never been more attainable nor more adorable, so it stands to reason that people who use emojis are having way more of it than those who don’t.
According to a new study conducted by Match.com, with the help of Rutgers University biological anthropologist Dr. Helen Fisher, 54 percent of singles who use emojis had sex last year, while 31 percent did not. That latter group had use for only one emoji:
Furthermore, those who used emojis more often also had sex more often, as illustrated in this handy chart using the original emoji, a crooked line.
The data was reportedly true for people who were in their 20s, 30s, and 40s, suggesting a near-universal correlation, as well as confirming that there are 40-year-olds out there using emojis. Also, people are fucking them.
Somehow the study—which affirms that goofy little text pictures are helping people get laid more—manages to get even weirder, as the survey also found that women who use “kiss-related emojis” have an easier time achieving orgasm with familiar partners. As Time suggests, “That may be because emoji users cared more about finding partners who consider communication a desirable trait”—even where “communication” means sending a little smiley-face blowing a kiss. And those people feel comfortable telling those partners, “Hey, do this unusual yet satisfying thing to my vagina” by sending them detailed emoji directions.
Logically, the results can be explained by the fact that emoji users also tend to date around more, meaning they have more sex with various people who haven’t yet found their constant usage of emojis annoying. But Fisher points out they’re also twice as likely to want to get married—if only they could find someone to take them seriously, Sad Kitty Cat, Wine Glass.
As for the psychological whys behind these correlations, Fisher says that emojis allow users to express their emotions over a technology that “absolutely jeopardizes” that, facilitating deeper bonds and sidestepping potentially relationship-derailing misunderstandings. For example, texting someone, “I like you” can come across as incredibly sarcastic, or like the first part of a multi-part text (“I, like you, never longed for a life on the sea, until that fateful day on Puget Sound…”), and your failure to finish the story will only frustrate your partner.
If, however, you add a little picture of a camel, she’s gonna go, “Aww yeah! Humpin’ time!” And as you’ll wistfully recount years from now, that’s how your grandkids got there. This is simply how modern relationships work now—helpfully explained in this emoji, summarizing the indignities one must cheerfully endure these days if you want a chance at happiness: