A few months back, strange songs featuring strings of brand-new slang blew up on the internet. “Skibidi rizzler” and “Fanum tax” were two phrases we came across and didn’t recognize, even after mindless hours of scrolling through reels. Even as proud Gen Z-ers (those born between 1997-2010), we were left thoroughly confused — what does any of this have to do with Ohio and “gyatt”?
It’s hard to say when the first surge of Generation Alpha (those born between 2010 and 2025), which includes the Class of 2028, started. Perhaps it was when we were all away taking APs and standardized tests while the young kids were left alone to stew in social media. Or, maybe they all met up in secret and decided that this would be their fancy alien lingo.
The alien language of Gen Alpha has only grown in recent months. Videos of talking toilets and 6-year-olds proclaiming, “Ermm what the sigma,” are taking over the internet. We’ve even begun hearing this strange slang around the school hallways and at home with our little siblings. It is safe to say that we are the boomers of this generation. Even now, we still don’t quite understand the phenomenon of this changed vocabulary.
What we don’t realize is that Gen Z had its version of brain rot just a few years ago, with buzzwords like “slay” and “lowkey” taking over the internet and filling the halls of middle schools. It would be hypocritical to say that Gen Z is any more normal than Gen Alpha. Even so, many Gen Z-ers rebuke this statement, saying their slang had more meaning than Gen Alpha’s nonsense.
Most of these trends result from prolonged media exposure at a young age. Videos about Skibidi toilets are circulating all over social media, specifically as YouTube shorts, the home of the next generation.
This exposure is primarily because more Gen Z and Millennials now have children of their own and resort to devices to parent their kids, usually doing more harm than good. It is dragging young children into an unending black hole of “brain rot,” an internet term describing the consumption of high-exposure internet content, which inhibits brain activity in real life.
This lack of care by parents who give elementary school students phones and access to apps like YouTube and TikTok is disturbing, to say the least. Many of these spiral symptoms, which pull kids into hours of mindless scrolling, started over the pandemic when kids were forced to stay at home. They were away from their school connections, where they truly belong.
One particularly harmful trend has been the growth of the “Sephora kid” phenomenon. This trend involves kids between the ages of 7 and 12 visiting their nearest Sephora, seeking out Drunk Elephant and Glow Recipe products. These children believe that the products will help them prevent aging and appear more youthful.
Not only are the ingredients in these makeup products — such as retinol — harmful to their skin, but they’re also emptying their parents’ wallets, as many of these products are priced relatively higher. For example, the Drunk Elephant Protini™ Polypeptide Cream, trending for its unique application mechanism, is currently sitting at $69 for a standard quantity. With lenient Gen Z parents that often don’t say “no,” this enables the preteens to ask for and receive more expensive products.
The worst part about the new Gen Alpha slang is that it is spreading to Gen Z-ers hoping to stay “in trend” with the younger generation. The famous and all-too-relatable phrase “I’m cooked” often describes our academic lives, especially after a difficult physics test.
This continuous exposure to the internet is inhibiting Gen Alpha’s educational progress and destroying kids’ self-esteem. Specifically, excess internet use has been shown to increase rates of depression and anxiety, which empirically affected us all during COVID-19. Only now, kids are experiencing these mental health issues at increasingly young ages.
On the brighter side, Gen Alpha’s use of technology has prompted some areas of growth. For one, Gen Alpha has a more robust response to visual learning and communication, which allows them to understand verbal and graphic lessons more easily than previous generations.
Furthermore, Gen Alpha is more likely to ask questions in class, be extroverted and work out problems mentally. These are all beneficial traits for learning, as greater engagement in the classroom faster advancement.
Ultimately, Gen Alpha will be the one to take the baton from Gen Z and Millennials and guide us into the future. But, for now, we’d better get used to the “skibidi” and “sigma” slang in the hallways and keep on praying these alien beings will become more recognizably human as the years go by.