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Decoding Gen Alpha’s quirky slang, from ‘skibidi’ to ‘Italian brain rot’ and ‘6 7’
Teachers are adapting to engage students – but with caution – while experts share insights on this rapidly evolving digital dialect
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“I am Hugo, and I’m pretty sure I’m the first ever person in my family to get my brain rotted,” says Hugo Lee, a nine-year-old student at Lion’s Club International School in Tin Shui Wai.
It might sound odd to boast about having a rotten brain, but Hugo and his classmate, 10-year-old Jesswin Kerung, proudly compete to list as many slang words as possible. They rattle off words that parents of toddlers and young teens may already know: “skibidi”, “rizz”, “negative aura”, and the hottest slang at the time of writing – since there seems to be something new every other day – “6 7”.
Older generations struggling to keep up with new lingo is nothing new. Back in 1992, the LA Times published “List Solves Mystery of Teen Slang”, pandering to parents and teachers of Gen X and young millennials baffled by their children’s evolving dialects.
Now, those very Gen Xers and millennials rely on articles like this one to decode their kids’ speech. Born between 2010 and 2024, the eldest Gen Alpha kids came into the world alongside iPads and Instagram. Growing up fully immersed in technology, especially during the Covid-19 pandemic when they were stuck at home glued to screens, it’s no surprise that these so-called “iPad kids” have developed a hyper-online way of speaking which older Gen Zers and millennials often jokingly refer to as “brain rot”.
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