You’re so hip. You know how to rock a puffer vest and totally kept your cool when you caught your teen sexting, (well, at least in front of them anyway). But you could use a little help when it comes to internet slang. Because how else are you supposed to decipher what the hell your kids are talking about?
Below, the terms that create the most confusion among the uninitiated (ahem, parents), per digital jigsaw puzzle platform I’m a Puzzle who crunched the numbers to come up with the country’s most Googled slang terms.
Unsurprisingly, many of these words come from social media (“FYP” refers to the page a person is shown on TikTok with videos the app thinks the user will enjoy based on its algorithm, and a “Finsta” is a fake Instagram account…something your kid probably definitely has.) Other terms (like “bae” and “woke”) come from African American Language (AAL), which as Ellen Gutoskey points out in an article for Mental Floss, “can be interpreted as both a testament to America’s growing acceptance of AAL and also to its ongoing cultural appropriation of it.”
But it’s not all bad news—you probably know some of the terms on here already. After all, “stan” (i.e., an obsessed fan) entered the vernacular with Eminem’s 2000 hit song, “Stan” and you know all about those Karen white privilege memes. As for the rest? Well, read on to find out.
