What is it with silly acronyms and abbreviations these days?
My tween not only writes and types these things, but she also speaks them as well!
Arg, my teacher-brain cringes at the mere mention of BRB, LOL, OMG, TTYL, LMBO (and it’s less appropriate cousin LMAO) as well as ain’t, um, uh, like….you get the idea.
I read that our kids are growing up in such a tech-savvy world that their reading, writing, and even speaking skills are being compromised due to so much time spent playing with electronics. Scary thought!
Is this too much???
But this makes sense if you consider all the gadgets that are mainstream today which were nonexistent or at least not so prevalent when we were children. Computers, laptops, I-phones, cell phones, Ipods, Wii, DS, digital cameras, etc.
I don’t know about you all, but when I was young we talked on the house phone and used a computer at the public library occasionally, that was about it! LOL! Haha gotcha (:
My 11-year-old had a friend over last night and over dinner she informed me that the new “cool” word is beast. What?! Beast means something really good? As in, “wow that new I-phone is so beast!” I’m sorry, but that is the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard…ok, maybe not the most, but pretty close to it!
I sighed with a resigned “kids these days” …oh wait, I remember certain other “cool” words such as bad, rad, tubular, gnarly, sick, big dog, twisted, righteous, fresh, and fly from when I was young, and I’m pretty sure I may have used one or two of them in my day, uh-oh.
By the way, when I spell-checked this post, none of the acronyms came up as misspellings; that is how normal they are today! OMG!
Does your tween use too much “cyber-speak” or made up words like beast? How do you handle this or respond to it?
Tags: "cool" words, abbreviations, acronyms, cyber speak, onslow memorial hospital, Sarah Moore, tweens and electronics
We haven’t faced this yet since we will not let our daughter on facebook, text or have her own personal cell phone. I do ask questions about words and contexts so that I can know what she is talking about…could I have a dictionary please? I agree that it is often ridiculous and silly, but at the same time, our generation had words that our parents rolled their eyes over too. I have had to tell my daughter that some of the abbreviations her friends use are not appropriate…most of the time she honestly didn’t know what it meant and was repeating it to “fit in.”
Hi Kristin,
That’s what’s so crazy about this — it is so widespread that even though my stepdaughter does not have access to any of those things either she still is exposed to them through friends, school, etc.
I am not a big fan of OMG but she assures me that when she says it she mean gosh instead of God, hmm…I usually ask her to repeat things in “real English” by pretending I don’t know what they mean, haha, then her Dad will use them out of context and she will see how silly they sound.