I will preface this by saying that I suppose if you're a particularly serious person you should stay away from emojis, they don't really have a place in serious conversations, only if you're joking around or having fun
Do emoticons in chats make you seem like too childish and immature?
“When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.” - C.S Lewis
How do you guys handle this thing? Are you one who uses them a lot, here and there or almost never?
use emojis/emoticons/smileys/whatever where they're appropriate
for example, I make a loooooooot of jokes, use a lot of sarcasm and generally say a lot of things either not meant to be taken seriously or not meant to be taken literally, as a result I use an emoji or two whenever I send something which can be easily misinterpreted,
I have totally been in situations where someone was dumb enough to misinterpret an obvious joke because I didn't use enough emojis to let them know that I wasn't
really a bank robber