OMG! We can travel along any street in any town in America, and there will be teenagers walking by, with their heads down, eyes fixed on their smartphone and thumbs very busy. You might see a random pair of teens texting while sitting beside one another on a park bench, on the bus or in the back seat of their parents’ car. No, they aren’t texting to someone in a remote location; they are texting to each other. That’s communication today!
Everyone is texting! In fact, some people say their communication preference is to text as opposed to talking on the phone. Is anyone still engaging in real person-to-person conversations via the telephone? God forbid, we should converse face-to-face anymore!
What’s happening is that we all are guilty of intextication, not emailing, but texting ‘ad nauseum’. Since there are youth who suffer from ‘affluenza’, why not ‘intextication’? Totally intexticated, indeed! We no longer write using full sentences to convey our messages and our thoughts. Besides, there are character limits. Therefore, we have reduced conversations to anagrams, acronyms, emojis, and no punctuation. Doesn’t anyone speak English anymore?
I must admit that I have fallen prey to this new medium, too. Occasionally, after what I consider a funny msg[message], I will add a closing ‘LOL’, or a ‘Smiley-Face’ before hitting the non-reversible ‘send’. I got that one from my daughter years ago, and it’s still relevant.
But that is just the tip of the iceberg. How about: ‘FOMO, LMFAO, OMG, BRB’, and the language has expanded! Even the President texts and tweets! This is life in the digitally connected, tech savvy world. Everyone is intexticated, especially screen-agers! KMN
Anyone old enough to remember ‘Pig Latin’? Parents didn’t have a clue, and the objective of today’s teens and tweens is no different….KPC! At least, this time as the parent, we can be ‘in the know’.
So, here are more text-talk acronyms, demystified, decoded and parents should know them just in case you happen upon a teen texting random alpha-numeric characters that appear to us old people as ‘nonsensical’. Don’t ‘get it twisted’, though, parents must always try to be a step ahead of those text-proficient techies. KWIM
PARENTAL TEXT SECRET DECODER[PTSD]:
1432 I love you too
ATM At The moment
gerd Abbreviation for ermagerd (Oh my God)
GR8 Great
CMB Call Me Back
CUNS See You In School
F2F Face to Face
FOAF Friend Of A Friend
FML F*** My Life
FTW For The Win
GTG Got to Go
GTFO Get the F* Out
HAK Hugs and Kisses
HMU Hit Me Up
IKR I Know, Right?
IDC I Don’t Care
IDK I don’t Know
ITA/D I Totally Agree/Disagree
IRL In real life
J/K Just Kidding
KK Okay
KWIM Know what I mean?
L&R Love and respect
mmk Mmm…okay
MEGO My Eyes are Glazing Over
MYT Meet You There
NAGI Not A Good Idea
NBD No Big Deal
NGH Not Gonna Happen
NMP Not My Problem
NSFW Not Safe for Work
NSFL Not Safe for Life
NTIM Not That It Matters
N00B Newbie
OATUS On a totally unrelated subject
O RLY Oh, really?
P&C Private and Confidential
PITA Pain in the A**
REHI Hi, again
RUOK Are You OK?
QQ Crying (often humorously)
SFSG So Far So Good
SLT Something Like That
SOL Sh** Out of Luck
SUP What’s up?
UOK Are you okay?
4Q F*** You
VCDA Vaya Con Dios, Amigo
VSF Very Sad Face
WDYM What Do You Mean?
WFM Works For Me
WRUD What Are You Doing?
WTG Way To Go!
W00T Hooray!
WTH What The Hell?
XOXOZZZ Hugs, kisses, sweet dreams
ZOMG Oh my God
And…more:
TEXTING ACRONYMS ABOUT THOSE PESKY PARENTS
AITR Adult in the Room
303 Mom
M/POS Mom/Parents over shoulder
PIR Parent in Room
PAL Parents are Listening
PAW Parents are Watching
CD9 Parents around/Code 9
PA / PA911 Parent Alert
9 Parent Watching
99 Parent Gone
TEXTING ACRONYMS ABOUT SEX AND RELATIONSHIPS
53X Sex
?^ Want to Hook Up?
ASLP (What is your) Age/Sex/Location/Picture? (Also ASL)
CU46 See You For Sex
DYHAB/G Do You Have A Boyfriend/Girlfriend?
DTH Down To Hang (I’m up for getting together)
FWB Friends With Benefits
GNOC Get Naked on Camera
IPN I’m Posting Naked
LH6 Let’s Have Sex
LJBF Let’s just be friends
LMIRL Let’s Meet In Real Life
LYLAB/S Love You Like A Brother/Sister
NSA No Strings Attached
TEXTING ACRONYMS: THE SECRET LIFE OF TEENS
1174 The meeting place for a party
420 Marijuana
BYAM Between You and Me
4YEO For Your Eyes Only
CRAFT Can’t Remember a F’ing Thing
DWB Driving While Black
DADT Don’t Ask Don’t Tell
DOC Drug Of Choice
SOBT Stressed Out Big Time
TWD Texting While Driving
WTPA Where’s The Party At?
%\ Hangover
#-) Exhausted, partied all night
SEP Someone else’s Problem
SITD Still in the Dark
SLAP Sounds like a Plan
SOS Significant Other
TMI Too Much Information
J/K Just Kidding
JC Just Checking
JTLYK Just to Let You Know
KMN Kill Me Now
KPC Keeping Parents Clueless
L8R Later
And, believe it or not, the list goes on.
If you are a parent, memorize this list to use as a reference. Not that I am advocating for snooping, but desperate times call for desperate measures. If your child seems to be totally wrapped up in their cell, and ceases to acknowledge your presence with a simple “hello”, because they can not look away, then…. desperate times…
When you walk into the room, and your teen gets a weird look on his/her face, but continues typing into that damn phone with ‘who knows who?’, aren’t you a bit curious, concerned or sometimes just plain worried? If not, you should be.
When your child practically walks right into you, bumps into objects directly in front of them, or accidentally steps on the family dog’s tail, then there you have it….INTEXTICATED!
God forbid, your teen has a driver’s license and TWD [texts while driving]! That is an absolute deal-breaker, and it’s also illegal. Time to take the car or the phone away, and time to snoop! They are too intexticated and a DWI[driving while intexticated] will cause your auto insurance premium to go ‘sky-high’. Don’t let this happen to you or your child. BTW[by the way], I wonder which choice teens would make between phone or car.
Don’t forget, they all think that they’re smarter and more cool than us, anyway. So, we mustn’t let them become too intexticated and forget how to write full, logical and grammatically correct sentences. Also, don’t let them become so wrapped up in communicating by text that they lose the ability to interact socially or engage in-person with others, either.
Despite the new tech-etiquette, web-etiquette, and text-etiquette, old-fashioned social etiquette is still alive and relevant. Was that TMI?
Last thought, OMG, JTLYK, this is DADT, P&C and FYEO: As long as you have PTSD, your intexticated teen won’t know that you know what they think you don’t know. Stay in the know and the last laugh will be yours. LMFAO
L8R
LOL:)
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