My son yells from the other room, “Skibbidi Ohio rizz!” Today, I don’t need to Google any of those words, or run to Urban Dictionary, because fortunately (or unfortunately?), I know all three of those kids’ slang words at this point. More importantly, I know that none are harmful; I don’t need to check whether he’s saying something that will get him kicked off whatever server he’s playing on today.
It still sounds weird to me. What happened to all that nice ‘normal’ slang that I grew up with in the 80s and 90s, like “radical,” “no duh,” and “fly?”
While the words have changed, are kids’ slang terms all that different from past terms?
Remember How Our Adults Reacted To Our Slang?
I remember a teacher yelling at one of my classmates for saying “my bad” instead of using a phrase she considered a more acceptable apology.
“Yes, it is your BAD!” she scolded.
I remember walking, at 17 years old, into an office that also housed WIC and other programs and reading a chart hung on the bulletin board. It warned parents of the dangerous kids’ slang their children were using on the internet, like “POS” for “parent over shoulder” and “ASL” to ask someone’s age, sex, and location.
I laughed because I saw it as alarmist, and even though I spent so much time in chat rooms (this would have been the year 2000 or maybe 2001), I had never seen anyone use some of the abbreviations they were most worried about. Why would we say “POS” when we only had to type short lines and hit enter rapidly? If my friend suddenly took eight lines to type a single sentence, or changed the subject to homework or news, I knew he was getting text off the screen and out of sight.
From the inside, our slang was pretty neutral: We had phrases for good things and bad things, phrases that referred to things our adults would rather we didn’t know at all, and phrases that were innocuous.
Now Our Kids Are Speaking A Different Language
I was the kid on the fringes who did not always know the current kids’ slang and trends. I can remember worrying that a word, a shoe brand, or a gesture might mean something I didn’t intend it to.
If you weren’t that person, I think it can be strange to be an adult and look at others using words you don’t understand.
Why is my child saying “no cap?” One of the teenagers in my life explained that it evolved from “all cap/hat, no cattle,” meaning someone who pretends to be something they’re not, so saying “no cap” would be to assure people that you weren’t making stuff up or faking it.
The first time one of the teens around me said “bet” to signify agreement, I thought it sounded like a phrase intended to be a challenge — after all, as kids, we would have said “Wanna bet?”
As adults, we have this bizarre transition, where we go from being the center of our toddlers’ world, to such an extent they’re banging on the bathroom door screaming demands to know exactly what we’re doing in there, to suddenly having these tweens and teens who think we’re strange and outdated. We’re on the outer fringes of their world, and it’s jarring.
Just How Weird Is Our Kids’ Slang, Really?
Our kids call a lie “cap.” We called it bull (or a more fecal version of that word) or bogus, and we would yell “psych!” when someone fell for a trick.
Our kids say “rizz.” We might have said someone was bodacious, or wicked. Where they call something “Ohio,” we might have called it grody.
They use “ski bidi” (which comes from a YouTube video) as a filler with no specific meaning. In the ’80s, we might shove “totally” into sentences where it had no real meaning or just use it as a whole response in itself, and we repeated phrases from commercials and television shows, too.
I remember when one of my classmates had watched a certain Seinfeld episode the evening before, and repeated the “dingo ate my baby” line all day in school. (How meta — in the episode, Elaine Benes repeats variations of the phrase after watching the 1988 movie, A Cry In The Dark.) Kids I went to school with repeated lines from the previous weekend’s episode of All That, or the movie Forrest Gump, or from commercials, like “I wish I were an Oscar Meyer weiner.”
And sure, they use some kids’ slang that make us clutch our precious pearls a bit, like ‘gyatt,’ but are we going to pretend our generation didn’t quote the spoken first lines of “Baby Got Back” when Sir Mix-A-Lot dropped it?
So, What’s The Real Difference In Our Kids’ Slang?
There are certainly differences in how our kids experience slang and how we did.
The biggest difference is that they’re a lot more online than we were. When I played in chat rooms in the 90s, it was because I was a nerd who liked using computers even when I didn’t have any homework. When our kids are online, it’s because all their friends are.
That means that teen subculture can change much more quickly, and there’s a lot of access for people with ill intentions who can pretend to be any age and anyone behind a screen. It does mean we need to be vigilant and make sure our kids aren’t getting dragged into dark corners of the internet where they might absorb truly toxic ideologies.
But the slang? The general slang that all of them are using?
Eh. It’s not that different from anything we grew up saying- our roles have just changed.
So, What Should Parents Be Doing?
If your kid says a phrase you don’t understand, ask.
If they can’t or won’t explain it, search online.
Urban Dictionary can be a valuable source, but it can also be exceptionally graphic and sometimes extremely wrong. Since slang changes fast, and the site’s information is user-submitted, sometimes entries are intended to be funny or false, so use it with caution.
We Are Teachers has a list of 100 common slang words and phrases for 2025. Remember that meanings change, and sometimes one friend group might use a phrase differently than its common meaning.
Also, listen for context. Don’t assume that it’s bad just because you don’t know it — keeping adults in the dark is pretty normal teen culture.
Engage with their media. You don’t have to go full brain-rot, but watch a few of the same TikToks they follow, ask about their favorite YouTube channels, and listen to some of the songs they love.
Keep lines of conversation open regarding kids’ slang and encourage trust and honesty. Try to balance trusting your child, after all, you’ve been raising him with the values you want him to learn, with following your gut when something seems wrong.