The text slang all parents of teens should know

A parental protection software firm creates a helpful graphic to assist you in decoding online jargons

Written communication among kids and teens today has morphed into such a confusing mixture of acronyms and emojis that it can almost make hieroglyphics more easily understood. This is why it’s important for parents to be up on the latest text slang. Now, a parental protection software firm Bark has created a helpful graphic to assist parents in decoding online slang. “Text lingo practically changes weekly and a lot of the times, parents have no clue what their kids and their friends are saying,” says Titania Jordan, chief parent officer of Bark, a software program that monitors, detects and alerts parents to potentially dangerous conversations on their kids’ cell phones, and email and social media accounts.

Bark differentiates itself by sifting through conversations and only alerting parents to troubling words or thoughts — ones whose acronyms parents might not be familiar with. Most of the other programs and apps will provide parents with all the data that goes through their kids’ devices, resulting in a lot of information to wade through. It also has the ability to decipher when kids are kidding and when they’re being serious.

“If it’s a high school girl who’s tripped and fallen in the hallway in front of her crush, and she texts her friend, ‘KMS’ [kill myself], the software will recognize that she’s joking and won’t alert her parents that she’s on the verge of suicide,” Jordan says. “But if it detects a kid expressing loneliness or sadness and that acronym pops up, the parents will be alerted.”