A Guide to Children’s Culture for Out-of-Touch Adults: the 10 Most Popular Slang Expressions of 2025.

As 2025 draws to a merciful close, I decided to look back on the past year and examine its slang. Below are ten examples of youth slang, chosen both for their popularity and for what they reveal about Generations A and Z. Like most slang expressions, these words and phrases have evolved over time, so while many of them didn’t first appear in 2025, they gained popularity in that year. (For a more comprehensive list of youth slang, check out my guide to Gen Z and Gen Alpha slang .)

6-7

The most popular slang word of 2025 is undoubtedly “6-7.” These two previously unremarkable numbers have gained unprecedented popularity among young people this year, much to the dismay of many educators and parents. It’s perfect Gen A slang because it doesn’t have a literal meaning, unlike many words in youth culture, but rather serves as a self-contained joke. Often, the idea is to use the phrase in conversation: if someone asks your height, what score you got on a test, or what time it is, you can answer “six-seven.” Funny.

The 6-7 project gained widespread popularity after Philadelphia artist Skrilla released the track “Doot Doot (6 7)” in February.

Since then, the word has been repeated in schoolyards and TikTok posts for no apparent reason other than it was fun to say. Within a month or two, “6-7” had become a fully established slang term, and everyone knew what it meant (or didn’t mean). Dictionary.com named “6-7” the word of the year. It spawned numbers like “41” and “93.” Older generations waited for it to end, but “6-7” didn’t disappear. Almost a year later, kids still say it constantly. So, it means something to them. But what exactly? The lack of a literal meaning for “6-7” highlights the difficulty of defining a generation that seems uninterested (or unable) to define itself.

Brain rot

“Brainrot” describes online content, typically videos and memes, that are stupid and nonsensical. They are typically loud and aggressive: “Brainrot” is not known for subtlety. It also describes the supposed impact of consuming such content on children. One of the earliest and most famous examples of “brainrot” is a YouTube video series called ” Skibiddi Toilet ,” which has garnered billions of views. Since then, the genre has evolved and now often consists of reimagining and remixing obscure memes to create content that is almost entirely devoid of meaning, such as this Italian “brainrot.” Younger children, in particular, spend vast amounts of time viewing such content, so it is likely shaping the collective worldview of Generation Alpha, but it’s difficult to say where this will lead.

Slap

“Badass” is the name given to the hundreds of millions of ridiculous, disturbing images, videos, and songs generated by artificial intelligence that have appeared online since AI gained popularity in the last couple of years. The ease of production means that this badass content is quickly displacing human-created content, and young people will live in a future dominated by badass content. As a generation, they may have more intellectual and artistic connections with machines than with other humans.

Mason

Mason (or Mason 67 Kid) is a white suburban kid from Generation Alpha who plays baseball, has a bouffant ice cream cone hairstyle, and frequently says “6-7.” His sunglasses are Pit Vipers. He wears Yeezy slides. His polyester ice cream shorts are from Dick’s Sporting Goods. It’s impossible to predict whether “Mason” will stick around, but to my knowledge, it’s the first popular slang term to describe the dominant subculture of Generation Alpha. If it catches on, it could become the equivalent of calling boomers “hippies” and Gen Xers “slackers.”

Reheating Nachos at Home

This slang expression describes artists whose new work is perceived as an attempt to revive the best features of their previous work. This expression hasn’t gained widespread currency outside of online fan communities, but I’ve included it to highlight the hyper-specific slang that arises from the relative rarity of shared cultural experiences among young people. They are fragmented, and each fandom, hobby, and interest group has its own idiom, often incomprehensible outside that specific group.

Sandy

The word “sendy” is an adjective describing someone who does something bold and/or exciting. It’s often used in the expression “let’s get sendy,” meaning something like “let’s do something big/crazy.” It also often means “let’s get drunk.” This is an example of slang that originated among a small group of people and spread into the wider culture.

It all started in rock climbing communities in the ’80s and ’90s, when the expression “ascend it” was shortened to “send it” and used to encourage people to “take action.” “Send it” was then adopted by skaters, snowboarders, and other extreme sports enthusiasts, and eventually entered the mainstream when it was used in this video by influencers The Nelk Boys. The ability to so often pinpoint the origin of a slang word is another unique characteristic of Generations Z and A.

The 80/20 Rule

The 80/20 rule can refer to various scientific and organizational principles, but this isn’t how kids typically use it. An axiom popular in online incel communities is the idea that 80% of women only date the “best” 20% of men. The “male loneliness epidemic” and increasing social isolation have led many young people to accept such controversial, unproven ideas as empirical truth, and they have spread from online outcast communities to the entire population of Generations A and Z.

A performing man

This insult is directed at young men whose tastes, hobbies, and lifestyles are perceived as performances designed to gain social approval, especially among young women. Like the 80/20 rule, the term ” performative male ” originated in incel-dominated online spaces and has since spread into broader culture, expanding its meaning to the point where even reading in public is perceived as a performance. The problem with the term “performative male” is that it refers to only one kind of performance. The opposite performance of masculinity—the “alpha male” created by Andrew Tate and his many imitators—is thus perceived as authentic. This illustrates the growing toxic masculinity among young people, as well as the tight control over self-expression that arises from the fact that every public moment can end in potentially viral online ridicule.

Aura mining

The flip side of the “man on display” is “aura farming ,” the deliberate creation and display of a cool, charismatic, or impressive image, and its successful execution. This is generally considered a positive phenomenon: someone who successfully “presents” themselves in public and truly comes across as cool is engaging in “aura farming.” However, one of the downsides of “aura farming” is an excessive pursuit of perfection, which is uncharacteristic of the younger generation—in the past, this might have been called “posing.”

“Biz in the Trap”

“Beez” means something like “I always,” and “trap” comes from “trap house” but has a broader meaning, like “place of business.” So, “beez in the trap” means something like “I’m at the place of business, doing business,” but I’m not including it here for the sake of the words, but for how they’ve become popular online in 2025 and what it says about young people.

The rest of the slang in this column paints a rather bleak picture of youth, but we shouldn’t forget the creativity, passion, and warmth that also characterize Generations Z and A. The expression “Beez in the trap” exemplifies how young people are reimagining and rebuilding the culture we left them, creating something of their own, often surprising.

The meme works like this: two people stand back to back. The first person passionately sings along to the chorus of “What’s Going On” by 4 Non Blonde. The camera switches to the second person, who is singing along to a less existentially angsty Nicki Minaj song. It’s one of those things that just evokes joy beyond explanation, and is the quintessential “youth of 2025.” Enjoy:

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