You might want to think twice before punctuating your next text message with an emoji, as those smiley symbols can potentially land you in hot water.
A 12-year-old girl from Virginia learned this lesson the hard way after being hauled up on criminal charges for an Instagram post that was laden with the gun, bomb and knife symbols.
The offending post was discovered by a resource officer at Lanier Middle School in Fairfax on December 14 and reported to the authorities, according to The Washington Post.
The poster was traced via the Instagram account's IP address, and she has since been charged with threatening the school and computer harassment.
A spokesperson for the school said that the threat was "not credible", but the girl was hauled before a judge at juvenile court at the end of the month. The outcome of the hearing was not made public.
In cases like this one, prosecutors face the difficult task of determining whether abstract symbols carry a genuine threat of harm.
There was a similar case in New York last year when a teenager was charged with making a terrorist threat after playing fast and loose with the gun and police officer emoji on Facebook.
A grand jury later decided not to indict the youngster, ruling that his use of emoji was a show of bravado, rather than a threat to police officers.
These cases probably aren't the last we'll hear about emoji landing kids in trouble, so it's a good idea to stop and think before punctuating your social media postings with bombs, guns, knives, and other deadly weapons.