At the beginning of the 2010s when the Japanese-originating emoji keyboard first took the US by storm, I can admit now, I balked at the idea. Why did I need an extra keyboard? Why did my messages need little pictures? How would adding them contribute to the ever confusing world of communicating just through text? At that time texting wasn't new anymore, but it was far from as ubiquitous and accepted as it is today — and I certainly didn't have my parents sending me messages with the frustrated face when I didn't respond in a timely manner. Flash to today, and whole companies now exclusively use chat apps to carry out daily work — and those chats are rife with emoji reactions. So leave it to the ever-evolving Facebook to update the cultural mainstay, adding sound to accompany illustrations when sent in their Messenger app, called soundmojis.
Emoji has evolved in a significant way before, and to varying success, when Apple released the memoji feature in 2018. Memoji allows you to make an avatar of your own face, or really whatever you'd like your avatar to look like (mine is pink with vampire teeth; you care) — and then send the memoji with the same expressions as emoji faces. The addition also allows a talk feature with small facial movements.
