The technologically hopeless parent used to be the cute term given to those who confused ‘lol’ for lots of love. But modern day stragglers are given much more shame than sympathy.
Parents of the current generation must both expose their children to the online world and protect them from it.
The latest danger threatening young parents – not children, parents – is the inability to crack the text codes used by their children.
Listen to Host Holly Wainwright explain the main codes and their meanings. (Post continues…)
On the latest episode of This Glorious Mess, our parenting podcast, Holly raised how these codes can be missed and misunderstood by a parent who isn’t savvy to their true meaning.
“As a Snapchat rolls in, you’ve got about ten seconds – is it about drugs? Nude photos? No. It’s just a string of indecipherable letters,” she said.
“If you’re feeling all smug about knowing what bae means… I’m sorry to break it to you but you haven’t cracked all their codes just yet.”
Holly was joined by fellow parenting podcast host Jo Abi to discuss how these codes have been used within other young families.
Jo explained how her 12-year-old son used the coded acronym of ASL to determine the true intentions of an online stranger.
“So my son told me about ASL: it’s Age, Sex, Location. I thought, isn’t that just standard? He said, ‘No mum, because if they’re a stranger, that’s why they would ask that and that to us is a red flag.'”
The following list contains some of the most commonly used codes in online and text messaging.
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This Glorious Mess
