Young people use more slang due to social media: language purists are right to scream bloody murder?

‘Doekoe’, ‘lit’, ‘POV’, ‘slay’ or ‘hot girl summer’: anyone who regularly listens to hip-hop or hangs out with young people will recognize most of the words. But for others, parts of rap are inexplicable, almost secret language.

Due to the increasing popularity of TikTok and Instagram, more and more Gen Zers (born between 1997 and 2012) are adopting English slang in their everyday communication, according to research by language platform Preply. For years, language purists have been screaming bloody murder over language degradation. Is that correct?

Keeping up with today’s youth language is a profession in itself. Choose any rap song or TikTok video and you will see the words ‘shawty’ (cutie), ‘skrrt’ (very fast) or ‘mood’ being used over and over again. For years, words from rap music have been transferred to everyday language. The word ‘bling bling’ (striking jewelry) was the title of a song by Cash Money rapper BG and was added to the English Oxford dictionary after massive use in 2003.

Just like ‘bootylicious’ (sexually attractive), the song by Destiny’s Child from 2002. In September last year, terms such as ‘rizz’ (charisma), ‘goat’ (the best ever) ‘finsta’ (fake Instagram account) and Added ‘doggo’ (dog) to the Merriam-Webster dictionary. In 2011, the acronym ‘yolo’ ( y ou only live once or you only live once) a huge hit after Canadian rapper Drake introduced this term in the song The motto . Since then, the term has been used worldwide. Yolo was added to the English dictionary in 2016 and is also included in the Dutch Dikke Van Dale.

Social media channels have increased these so-called slang words even more in 2023, Preply reports. Terms like ‘POV’ (point of view, in other words: look at it from my perspective), ‘Roman empire’ (thinking about the Roman Empire), ‘delulu’ (believing that the impossible will happen) or ‘hot girl summer’ (letting go on holiday) originated on TikTok, but were also used twice as much in everyday language by 2023. Forty percent of Dutch young people between the ages of 16 and 24 indicate that they communicate most in street language. 44 percent of them indicate that they will have learned slang from social media in 2023.

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Sociologist Frits Bosch is not very pleased with this development. “We currently live in a society in which many words are no longer allowed to be said because of the woke generation,” he says. “The Dutch language is already under enormous pressure. If we then add more and more English non-words, the pressure will become even greater. Slang words are also sometimes very crude in nature or used in a crude context. That should not be normalized in our language.”

‘Gap’

Language expert Nikki Jacobse from Preply also finds the figures worrying. She refers to the international trend research PISA ( Program for International Student Assessment ) from December, which showed that reading skills among Dutch 15-year-olds have further deteriorated. “The increasing use of English slang among young people is exacerbating this problem. This trend is not only worrying because of the decline in Dutch language skills, but also creates a communication gap between generations, which is also worrying.”

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Murder and fire again. Linguist Vivien Waszink wants to nuance the picture somewhat. “It is a very well-known phenomenon that young people like to have their own language. And they can often switch well if, for example, they have to write something serious at school/study,” she says. “The fact that young people read less and have poorer language skills is a problem in itself. In general, they pick up a book less often because of all the stimuli from social media, but their language skills are not under pressure from youth language. Slang terms have been used for years. After all, hip-hop music has been around for fifty years. But the number is indeed increasing due to social media and sometimes words in street language also take on a completely different meaning. For example, the term ‘toxic’. The word means toxic, but is now mainly used to describe a bad relationship.”

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‘Bubble’

‘Ghost’ is an example of a word that evolved through music. It has been used to describe a deceased person since the 1980s. However, thanks to rap and social media, it is now mainly used among young people to indicate that you have distanced yourself from someone without telling them, and vice versa. ‘Lit’ has been used to describe something cool since 2010. But this slang term has been around for more than a century to describe drunkenness, the study shows.

“The need for young people to use slang in their everyday language stems from the human need for a bubble. Young people in particular often want to belong to a group,” says Bosch. “As people get older, use will also decrease. But some adults don’t realize that their hose sometimes pops out too. Recently I heard two older people say ‘hey dick’ to each other.”

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Most popular slang words

Which slang words were most used in music last year? Preply analyzed more than 90 top artists from the Billboard 100 and more than 3,632 songs from different genres. The most popular terms in 2023 were: