Back in the early days of IRC, abbreviations were used such as “LOL”, “brb”, “gtg”, and so on. Many of them are still being used today, but teens these days have started creating more abbreviations and slangs of their own, so much so that the UK government has actually compiled a guide to help parents decipher what their kids are saying.
According to education secretary Nicky Morgan, “As a parent myself, I understand how important it is to know your child is safe and that’s why this new online service is so important. I hope all schools take advantage of this new resource, which addresses fundamental issues like cyberbullying and body confidence, so that they can help protect their children in this digital age.”
The goal is to be able to decipher what your kids are saying to each other, so that parents have a better idea of what’s going on. For example if kids are trying to engage in behavior and their parents are around, they might use abbreviations like “P999” or “CD9”. They might also use slang like “zerging” to indicate they want to gang up on someone.
Parents who are able to catch on to these slangs might then be able to intervene in such behavior more effectively. No doubt this is an interesting idea but teens can easily come up with new slangs just as easily, so we’re not sure how effective this is, but like we said it’s a good attempt anyway.
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