We all know that the biggest threats to kids today are (in no particular order): confusion, traumatizing FEMA coloring books, and sexting. Of the three, sexting is probably the most dangerous. It will burn your child if he/she touches it. Sexting will tell your kid it's okay to skip school. What's worse, despite the fact that it's just a stupid portmanteau, sexting will crawl into your child's window at night and steal his/her innocence.
But how can you know if you're kids are sexting, or if they're just sending random arithmetic problems back and forth to each other?
Thankfully, Fox's Atlanta affiliate has put together a handy guide to help parents decode their children's personal text messages: The Top 50 Text Acronyms Parents Need To Know. A sample:
Kids. They're always making plans to meet up at the elite nude club to tell each other "I hate you." (Translation: 1337 1174? 182 xoxo) But that's just their generation. Be honest, when you were a kid, didn't you and your friends run off, signaling flags in hand, to separate hilltops for a little dirty semaphore every afternoon? Really, only the times and technologies have changed, not the behavior.
Still, parents should be on the alert for these (largely non-existent and/or obvious) acronyms. Here are a few more favorites:
Yep. That sounds exactly like a kid. "What r u up 2?" "Nothin. Just KPC. U?" "U gnow. Emo-goth blood letting, like we all do."
Zing! Good work, whomever made up this list of acronyms and got the Fox affiliate to believe them.
Is the fact that there's no #15 a mistake, or is the Fox affiliate saying that kids send blank texts in order to convey blankness? You decide.
Obviously, this list is a good starting point for concerned parents, but they've left off a few important, popular text acronyms. Such as: SFF ("swinging on the flippity flop, or "hanging out"), PR ("pain ride" or "bus trip"), and MomDum ("Mom's Dumb").