So, like Facebook, you might want to leverage the true power of Emojis, or maybe Reactions.

The good news is that Jori Lallo made a Component for it.
The awesome news is how easy it was to achieve it with React Native's JavaScript superpowers and the existing node-emoji project.

react-native-emoji on GitHub

Emoji as React Native component

<Emoji type="coffee" style={{ fontSize: 50 }} />