Why You Too Can Start Saying Teens’ New Favorite Word

Shyla Carter recently got into a fight with a classmate. A 13-year-old girl completed her math homework, describing the problem to her former teacher, J.P. Peralta. The misunderstanding started in person, she clarified, but quickly leaked online. Frustrated with how it was handled on social media, Carter decided to delete her Instagram and TikTok. Too many things fuel her anger right now: interpersonal, political, international.

She sighed heavily. “I see so many things that make me want to scream,” she said. “I don’t know, chat.”

Carter likes to refer to people as “chat”. It can be used to address her friends together, her friends individually, and sometimes her family members. It is both singular and plural. This is both the second and third person. Everyone, regardless of the size of the intended audience, is chat. “I’ve been saying that all day,” she said. “In any situation.”

Terms “chat” and “chat is real» have gained popularity over the past few years. A term originally used in contexts such as “chat, is it real?” to “talk, am I ready?” originates from the world of Twitch and Discord, as streamers ask their audience for clarification, support, and answers—all within the stream’s chat window, where viewers can communicate with the streamer via text. But now it is accepted as IRL slangused in any context for any reason.

Popularized by gamers like iShowSpeed ​​​​in 2023, the term originally began when creators ironically asked their followers to identify clearly fake or AI-generated content presented to them during their live streams (“Is the chat real?“). When the term spread through TikTok and Instagram, it focused exclusively on the possessive plural, as people jokingly addressed their intangible audience. In such spaces as r/Uch on Reddit, educators shared hundreds history about a nickname that captures classes.

“My friends around me watch a lot of Twitch and live streaming, so they get that from Kai Senat and Duke Dennis, people like that,” Carter said. “I use it for the people around me. Like, “Yo chat, come here.” »

Peralta, who teaches drama to students in kindergarten through sixth grade, said it’s not uncommon these days to see social media comment etiquette seeping into interpersonal interactions among his students. “Chat” is one of the most common, often used between students and even between Peralta and his class. He said it often begins around the end of elementary school or early middle school, linking with the beginning stages of puberty.

“I can’t say I’m from Ohio,” he said, referring to the popular post-ironic slang term cringe, which quickly became oversaturated as it gained more attention, “or I’ll just lose class.”

Of course, among seniors, anything to do with children and the Internet is meant to cause concern. Much controversy has already been written about what Gen Alpha is illiterate iPad children who are doomed to a society of our own making, but Carter doesn’t see the development of “chat” as any more special than the popularization of any other slang term. She would not use “chat” in a context like school, especially with unfamiliar peers or authority figures. It’s just a derivative of their pop culture and adds some humor and energy to the conversation.

Darlene Intlekofer, a professor of sociolinguistics at the CUNY Center for Graduate Studies, told me that slang often helps develop a sense of community and social code among peers. Terms such as “chat” also speak to cultural norms emerging among young people, particularly the desire to deal with the natural stress or anxiety associated with growing up with humor and levity. “I think it shows that young people value inclusiveness in group interactions, and I love that about this generation,” Intlekofer said.

This language offers contextual differences from other nouns used to refer to a group of people. Intlekofer notes that her 11-year-old daughter and her friends have expressed feelings of social anxiety to her. For them, using “chat” can often function as an icebreaker when they are addressing people in the second person.

“One friend said that Generation Alpha grew up witnessing confrontations — think of the ‘Karen’ memes where people aggressively confront others in public,” Intlekofer said. “They said they’ve learned to avoid this kind of confrontation by using softer, less direct communication, and chat is a great example of that. It keeps things casual and non-threatening, which can help ease the social pressures they face.”

But Peralta stresses that many of these concerns — wanting to be seen by her peers as funny, popular and famous — are normal for any child entering puberty. The difference, he said, is that kids can now directly see who’s at the top of the cuteness pecking order, just by swiping up and seeing whose comments and posts got the most likes.

“It’s the same thing we saw, but we can point the finger more specifically at what we’re looking at,” he said. “They see these videos and think, ‘I see a quantification of how funny this is.’ So if I’m faking it, I might as well be funny.” Or “If I see something crazy or out of pocket, I can be funny too.” »

Peralta said he and his colleagues have noticed a problem among students where the ideas of wit, humor and the pursuit of individuality are conflated with who has the biggest comment. Roast battles between students at school can be ripped straight from the TikTok comments section. And although this is not news for teenagers say outrageous things to each other in hopes of gaining notoriety, Peralta noticed a direct seepage from the Internet in terms of how things were said.

“It’s one of those things that we have to defuse all the time,” he said. “Usually kids who want to be funny repeat what they hear or say that was good online.”

The language of “getting ratio” and “possession” runs through that, Peralta added. “Trends of TikTok comments are traded back and forth every day,” he said.

Sometimes the language and words they use online are much more problematic. He refers to a phrase said at school, which comes from a phrase that often appears under women’s posts on the Internet, where users leave a series of comments on videos of female creators, saying: “it’s pink gum“, referring to the author… “These (students) are not trying to make a sexual remark,” explained Peralta. “It’s the repetition of something that you understand enough to know that it causes inflammation, but not enough to know how harmful and dangerous it is.”

This is a reality that will inevitably happen as the Internet becomes an all-encompassing space for young people to navigate the world. Industries serving adolescent children have crumbled since social media have become the epicenter of the spread of culture, p between fashion and beauty mainly grouped into brands that cater to adults.

Children and adults consume the same content, and this content will inevitably contribute to their socialization. And while the issue of responsibility and blame shifts from creators to parents, to governments and tech companies, Peralta said it’s not about punishing students, but about being honest with them and giving them fundamental instruction and a vision of what how to manage your reality.

“I probably underestimate the fact that there are so many kids who are really well socialized and doing great,” he said. “This crazy anti-social behavior stands out more than ever because you can point to all these different reasons, but there are so many kids with more tools in their tool bag than I’ve ever seen.”

Carter believes this is simply the result of not knowing when to keep online things online and offline things off. The problem with that same beef was the way it leaked out onto the internet, where the misunderstanding was further clouded by subtweets and shade. And she is not alone. Peralta said many students have expressed a desire to live in an era where they don’t have to deal with the complications and sensationalism of social media. But they are the only ones who really understand each other’s problems.

“If I can just remove it, I won’t have to be mad,” Carter reasoned. “Who wants to be angry? Not me.”

She collected her books, completed her math homework. She showed Peralta and me the finished sheet before leaving for the evening. “Let’s chat later,” she said.