Social media has become such a pervasive part of our lives that we can’t help but attempt to understand it. Especially since our kids are growing up on it and sharing so much of their lives on it. So is social media the key to understanding our kids better? Well as this mum and son team show, it can help in deciphering the teen speak and slang that has dominated instant messaging.
The short of it
Kids these days are all shortening speech, I guess we can trace it back to the Twitter phenomenon where you are limited to expressing your thoughts in 140 characters or less as well as the sms(short messaging system) that has become the preferred way of communicating.
An acronymised world
So how do we communicate or understand them when they are OMG-ing here and LOL-ing there? After all they’re not real words! This video pits the skills of the mum with the deluge of popular acronyms that have become a part of a teenager’s day to day speech and they take this confusion and generation gap to a hilarious new level with this video.
Bond on social media
The results are hilarious but more than educating the public (mostly parents here) the video depicts the close bond the son has with his mother and how they seem to share an easy friendship. It’s also heartening to see how sporting the mum is in appearing in the video.
A compelling sight. Watch the video below of a local mum and son breakdown teen acronyms.
In the video the son tests his mother on the common acronyms that youth use these days. The mother does surprisingly well but stumbles at some points signalling how different generations input different meanings to common acronyms such as OC and BRB.
Locally adapted
What’s great about the video is that the acronyms themselves take on a localised context (look out for OC and PS) that point to how dialects and local landmarks have seeped and been adapted into acronyms.
As you watch the video how many of these acronyms you are able to guess correctly and impress your teen next time you drop him an SMS as you tell him that “OMG you have been waiting so long at OC and looking so blur that shoppers are LOL-ing at you!”