Bespoke Gibberish or Necessary Strategies

Hey, Chat by Steffi Cao
Slate, November 3, 2024

Why teenagers are deliberately seeking brain rot on TikTok by Steffi Cao; Emilie Owens
Psyche.co, October 8, 2024

"Brain rot” named Oxford Word of the Year 2024 ‍
Oxford University Press, December 2, 2024

Understanding how technology shapes students’ interactions, relationships, even their sense of reality is an essential part of being an educator. Some new slang (skibidi?) is likely just the bespoke gibberish of a restlessly creative age group, but sometimes, new constructs emerge that reveal something shifting in the way students understand themselves and the world. “Chat,” a word that has migrated from the discourse of “livestreaming” sites like Twitch and Discord, is one such sign of something deeper. A reference to the unseen audience for a livestream, “chat” is “both singular and plural…both second and third person.” One scholar quoted in Steffi Cao’s exploration of “chat” notes how generational slang “helps develop a communal sense of identity and social code among peers,” but “chat” also offers insight into how today’s children’s online lives are shaping their in-person interactions; imagining and referencing an unseen yet highly vocal audience IRL (in real life) feels like something new and different – and is obviously worth educator’s attention and reflection. Another teenage meme – reference to “brain rot” on sites like TikTok – is yet another window into how kids today are making sense of their internet and their experiences in the world. In selecting “brain rot” as its Word of the Year, the OED understands the term as” referring to low-quality, low-value content found on social media and the internet, as well as the subsequent negative impact that consuming this type of content is perceived to have on an individual or society.” Offering a slightly different perspective, media researcher Emilie Owens sees in the popularity of “brain rot” less a cry for help than the development by today’s teens of “a necessary strategy for managing the particular anxieties of being a teenager at this precise moment in history, fraught as it is with conflict, catastrophe, and predictions of future doom.” These terms – and their migration from the internet to students’ brains and ways of being in the world – matter for educators seeking to understand how the internet affects our students.