[meowface]

I've been on the internet 16 hours a day from a young age, and I've never used smilies/emojis/emoticons, except very ironically in some rare cases. I don't think they're necessary, and I find use of "informal IM style" (eliding capitalization and final periods) to be much more telling of tone, personally, especially among young people.

Periods + capitalization (when writing in English) over IM comes across as "cold" to me, whether or not someone's using emoji; unless they're above a certain age, of course.