You’re in a conversation with someone younger than you, maybe a patient, a student, someone you follow online, or your own child, and suddenly the sentence stops making sense.
“This movie was average.”
“I’m not going to lie, it’s kind of suspicious.”
“He gives the energy of the main character.”
“It’s so sad.”
You understand the words separately, at least some of them. But they have no meaning together.
As a psychotherapist and mother of a teenager, I hear this language not just in passing, but deep and layered in emotional conversations every day. Slang is reflected in how people describe relationships, anxiety, attractionand even their sense of self. Gen Z trends towards Gen Alpha, who are already pushing the language more, talk about brain rot, risqué, low-key, or terms like “6-7” that I still haven’t deciphered.
Slang has always been about belonging. Each generation develops its own language as a way of strengthening itself personalitytaste and cultural adaptation.
It acts as a social signal and serves to distinguish one generation from the previous generation. Humans are wired to form groups, and a shared language is the fastest way to identify who is who and who is not. When one understands the jokes, references, and metaphors of a conversation, they are perceived as a group or movement.
Teens and young adults use slang to create cultural passwords, an easy way to identify peers in the same online gaming rooms, music scenes, or other social ecosystems.
But unlike previous generations where slang was spread in school corridors, today’s slang is spread digitally and therefore affects a wider group and appears and disappears faster than ever before.
The phrase may appear in a TikTok video, spread through otherwise segregated communities, and then settle into daily chat for weeks. By the time the older generations hear it, the phrase already has meaning.
Interestingly, for Gen Z and Gen Alpha, slang serves as an emotional language online. For example, “medium” is used to refer to something inert, “sus” to wake up disbeliefand “primary character energy” for transmission confidence.
Many of these phrases are used to compress complex emotions such as discomfort, anxiety, sadness, grief, and skepticism into bite-sized structures that can be communicated in seconds.
In a fast-paced digital environment where attention intervals are short and communication is through texts and notesthis kind of conversation becomes extremely effective.
For the generation raised on the internet, there is a constant negotiation of wanting to be seen but not wanting to be exposed. Today’s youth use sarcasm as a way of exaggerating and relying on emotional responses. humor and sarcasm to express opinion while maintaining emotional distance. This is especially interesting in a digital culture where vulnerability can be dangerous. It creates a psychological buffer and allows one to communicate their vulnerability while maintaining plausible deniability. In the event that a comment elicits negative responses, it can be easily dismissed by resorting to humor.
Why is it harder now?
Adults often think that the difficulty comes from unfamiliar vocabulary, changes in tone, or abbreviations, but the real problem is context.
Many slang phrases only make sense within specific cultural ecosystems, such as TikTok videos, influencers, meme cultures, fashion trends, or music scenes. When General Alpha talks about “brain rot” they’re referring to a state of numbness that’s hard to break out of, at least that’s what I think it means. These phrases are not translated for clarity, so they are not. They come from experiences that someone who wasn’t born with an iPhone in hand will never fully understand.
It’s easy to dismiss slang as superficial, but it’s important to remember that an entire generation returns to it to connect. In many ways, slang becomes a GPS that directs people to their interests, their communities, and even their emotions.
Listening differently
If you’re trying to keep up with a changing language, you can probably stop trying. Language used to take decades to evolve and evolve, but now it moves faster than the seasons. The truth is, we don’t have to fully understand it. It is good that our children have their own language and we live on the edge of it. It is important to be able to listen to the truth and to be able to appreciate what lies beneath. When they refer to something as an annoyance, the word they use to describe their annoyance doesn’t matter. It is important to understand the source of the anxiety or worry. Or when they say “this slap” find out what motivates them and what they connect with it. Or when they talk about the “gentle life”, it is important to understand what they are dreaming of or what is covering them. It is important to stay curious and pay attention to what they are trying to communicate.
Because what doesn’t change is that our children depend on us and look to us when they’re in trouble, confused, or scared. And let’s face it, the world is scarier than ever, so who cares how they express their feelings as long as they do.
