- Middle school teacher Philip Lindsay has been using TikTok to help people understand Gen Alpha slang.
- He's educating his audience about the latest terms he hears from students, and what they mean.
- He told BI he wanted to help parents "bridge the gap of connection" with their kids.
Middle school teacher Philip Lindsay says he's always been "pretty in the know" about kids' slang.
The 29-year-old, who teaches 11- to 14-year-olds at Rim Country Middle School in Arizona, was a youth pastor for several years before becoming a teacher. He told Business Insider that one day, he wondered how many parents and teachers were unaware of the terminology the kids of today were using, and spent a few days writing down slang terms he heard from his students.
On October 16, he shared a comprehensive list of 24 terms in a video on his TikTok account, which has over 102,000 followers, where he typically posts comedic content about what his teaching job is like.
"One of the jobs as a teacher is to stay on top of the middle school slang because if you don't know what they're saying, how will you know if they're being inappropriate or not, right?" he said in the clip.
Some of the slang words Lindsay shared have been used in mainstream popular culture for a number of years now, including "cap" and "yeet," but others exploded online more recently after some creators tied them predominantly to Gen Alpha, such as "fanum tax" and "GYAT."
The post went viral, receiving 5.4 million views, and Lindsay went on to produce a series on middle school slang to help parents and teachers decode Gen Alpha.
All generations have their slang, and it's not as different as it may seem
Lindsay told BI that with his first video he was trying to "capture a feeling that teachers and parents seem to have, of, 'I don't know how to connect with my kids because I don't understand the language they're using.'"
"I think that's a relatable feeling," he added.
It seems this resonated. Commenters under Lindsay's video asked him to share more terms along with their definitions, which he did in various follow-up posts.
But Lindsay told BI he doesn't think Gen Alpha slang is all that different to previous generations' — while the words may have changed, many of the meanings are comparable to words he used when he was in school.
For example, he said he used to say "YOLO," meaning "You Only Live Once," and the Gen Alpha equivalent is "do it for the plot," which is often used to encourage others to take risks. "Slay" is another older slang term, which Lindsay has heard his students using, however Gen Alpha also uses the more current phrase "ate that" as an equivalent way of saying somebody "knocked that out of the park," he explained.
Lindsay told BI that when he was growing up, most of the slang terms he used were influenced by the music industry. Gen Alpha is still influenced by pop culture, but more likely to be influenced by words they've heard from influencers or in social media videos — something he's noticed too.
The term "fanum tax", for example, is linked to an online creator in popular streamer Kai Cenat's influencer clan called Fanum, who would jokingly swipe food from other members of the influencer crew referring to it as a "tax."
"A student may use this in the lunch room by walking up to somebody's plate, taking a piece of food, and saying it is a fanum tax," Lindsay said in a TikTok explaining the term.
According to Lindsay, slang words can spread very rapidly among middle schoolers, who he thinks see new terminology online and begin adopting it without having to speak to each other about what it means.
"It's crazy, because of the viral nature of YouTube and TikTok, how quickly all of them can be on the exact same page with what a word means and how to use it," he said.
Lindsay said parents can connect with their children by understanding the slang they use
Lindsay told BI he's received some online messages from parents thanking him for making his content and saying it's helped them to connect with their children.
He thinks of slang as a way for people to express emotions, and believes learning it can help parents connect with their children's feelings.
"I think a lack of understanding can sometimes inhibit that connection between adult and student, whether it's teacher to student or parent to student, and so that understanding of their language brings a level of ability to connect with them," he said.
"If as a parent, you can understand more of their language to be able to bridge that gap of connection, then that would be what I would hope they use the video for," he said, describing what he'd like parents to take away from his video series.
