Texting Lingo That A Teenager Might Use On Their Cellphones, A Parents Guide To Emojis!
When you think about the stereotypical teenager, what comes to mind? A pimply twig that enjoys blaring bubble gum pop music while their face is stuck in a cellphone screen? Or perhaps you thought of a certain smell attached to the essence of a teenager such as molding pizza. Whatever your stereotypical teenager looks like (or smells like) in your mind, they probably had a cellphone in their hand.
Cellphones have been around for a while now, journeying from a car phone to a screen the weight of a brick. Most adults know what a flip phone is, and how sending text messages were a time consuming process. To combat the time consuming process of sending a friend a quick message, cell phones acquired their own texting lingo made up by young people to communicate faster.
However as time progressed, it seems that the only ones using texting lingo/abbreviations are the same ones who created it back in the day. After coming across many articles of “This is the Text Slang All Parents Should Know”, it has become apparent that the ones making up this “texting slang” have never texted a teenager before in their life.
Referring to the article by Marillsa Racco, “Written communication among kids and teens today has morphed into such a confusing mixture of acronyms and emojis that it can almost make hieroglyphics more easily understood. This is why it’s important for parents to be up on the latest text slang”. From a middle-aged millennial’s perspective (born in 1996), this article is hilarious.
The author does deserve props though, as emojis are modern day hieroglyphics, and with Apple’s newest iOS update, it has attached certain words to emojis so an emoji suggestion pops up while typing certain words. For example, “happy” is attached to the cheeky smiley face with rosy cheeks, while “mad” is the beet red emoji face.
Now that we have discussed emojis and how yes, our younger generations are fluent in them, let’s move on to dissecting this texting lingo.
Take a look at the given examples from the article here:
GNOC: get naked on camera
FBOI: a guy who’s just looking for sex
WTTP: want to trade pictures
FINSTA: fake Instagram account
PAL: parents are listening
1174: meet at a party, stat
First of all, NONE of the youth use ANY of these acronyms. The closest one that we MAY use is ‘Finsta’, which would mean, “fake Instagram account”. 10 points to a helicopter parent, you got one right.
Moving on, we have a chart brought to you by Bark, an app for overbearing parents to spy on their kids’ digital device use to report back to the parent any concerns in email/text form and how to handle it.
Spoiler alert: 11 are correct out of 17. Perhaps 11.5, but there have been no spottings of a ‘kms’ in normal texting conversations between the ‘fam’ group convos (conversations).
Lit is correct, however it is slowly turning into an ironic/sarcastic phrase now and often said by teenagers when joking about how ‘lit’ graduation will be. It basically just means ‘pretty exciting’ and you don’t have to worry about your teenager smoking a joint in the middle of commencement, so you can calm down. (Unsupervised grad parties and ‘hangs’ are for that sort of activity, if you’re wondering).
Dabbing actually has multiple meanings—Dabbing is a dance move, and also a drug reference. It’s sometimes easy to distinguish the two using context clues, however “man, we are going to hit the dab tonight” is a 50/50, so good luck, parental units.
“Snatched” is also a synonym for “On Fleek” which basically means someone’s outfit/style is top notch, perfect, 5 stars, etc.
“Netflix and chill“ does mean hookup—and it can mean more than just a make out session. Moving on.
AF does mean as described above. Context: “That unsupervised grad party was lit af”
Basic is correct. Context: “That girl is so basic—no highlights and she just straightens her hair.”
100 emoji is correct—Actually, let’s just say ALL of the depicted emojis are correct so we can skip the awkwardness.
FYI—No one uses the last four. LIT-terally. No one. A text saying 99 would cause someone to believe they tried to use only half gigantic quotation marks.
Texting lingo we actually use:
LOL – Laugh Out Loud (Not lots of love—sorry grandma)
LMAO – Laughing My A** Off
WTF – What The F***
Niiiice – Sarcastic, we actually don’t give AF
K – Angry, not accepting, “Okay”
Ok – Could be a chill accepting “Okay” but could stand for “Not listening”
Okay – Everything is OKAY. Everything is LITterally fine. No attitude.
Okay. – Worse than a K sometimes.
Laughing crying emoji – That was funny, man.
Parents Should Look Online For Teenager Acronyms And Emojis!
When in doubt, consult UrbanDictionary.com. It will be your best friend. But while doing this, also keep in mind that it is not recommended to go snooping through your teenager’s texting conversations as an open line of communication is your best bet to gaining their trust. This way, you get to hear about hilarious ‘dates gone wrong’ instead of ‘yeah, the movie with my best friend Tiffany that I hangout with too much was good like it always is, I wasn’t out on a Tinder date and had to climb out a restaurant’s bathroom window.”
You’ll thank me later.
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Ariel is doing a summer internship with Holzfaster, Cecil, McKnight & Mues. She is a student at Wright State University studying Mass Communications. After a 2-year stint as Director of Marketing for Wright State’s University Activities Board, she found a love for marketing and graphic design. She enjoys painting, dancing, and participating in apartment renditions of popular musicals in her free time. The graphic above was also designed by Ariel!