It turns out that emoticons are considered a symbol, so they can beef up your passwords and make them more secure in combination with letters and numbers. Here’s how.
Okay now's my time to shine. The words "emoji" and "emoticon" are false cognates, as in they aren't actually related. Emoticon is a few-decade old word to describe emotion+icon, like :)
Emoji is Japanese (kanji - 絵文字) for picture-word, basically. It super outdates computers.
They just happen to sound similar; isn't that fun?