Awks: The kids’ slang words West Midlands parents can’t understand 🤔

New research has found that 83% of parents in the West Midlands don’t understand kids modern day slang, like IRL obvs!

‘Obvs’, ‘sick’ and ‘awks’ are currently among the words most commonly used by young people in Britain, but which leave most others at a loss when it comes to figuring out what they mean.

According to parents, their kids use at least three words a day that they do not understand. The research has even prompted cinema chain ODEON to train its colleagues in kids slang to help them better communicate with child guests.

Words such a ‘sick’, ‘savage’ and ‘squad’ are among those baffling British parents, whilst acronyms that stem from social media including IRL (in real life), AFS (away from screen) and BFF (best friend forever) are also causing parents headaches.

ODEON commissioned the research to develop a new training programme for its cinema colleagues, specifically designed to help make the cinema-going experience as stress free for families as possible. As part of this, it has trained its colleagues on kids slang to help them better communicate with child guests.

The top five kids slang words were revealed to be Obvs meaning ‘obviously’ (53%), Sick meaning something great (49%), Awks meaning ‘awkward’ (41%), Squad meaning ‘a group of friends’ (26%) and Savage meaning someone who has done something considered bold or feisty (24%).

The research also looked into the misinterpretation parents had of particular words.

Some of the most common included believing lit to mean literally, when in modern day slang it refers to something that was awesome; Safe to mean secure, when in kids slang it refers to being in agreement with something; AFS to mean ‘always forever seriously’ when it is actually the acronym for ‘Away From Screen’ and used when referring to someone you can’t get a hold of; and stan to mean standard when it is in fact the opposite and refers to a huge fan.

Top 10 slang words parents need to know:

1. Obvs meaning ‘obviously’ (53%)

2. Sick meaning something great (49%)

3. Awks meaning ‘awkward’ (41%)

4. Squad meaning ‘a group of friends’ (26%)

5. Savage meaning someone who has done something considered bold or feisty (24%)

6. Safe meaning something is good or to agree with something (19%)

7. Rage quitting meaning when a person quits a video game because they’re losing (17%)

8. Lit meaning when something is fun/cool (16%)

9. Deep meaning emotional (15%)

10. Triggered meaning something that has annoyed them (12%)

Chris Bates, Commercial Director at ODEON UK & Ireland said, “We’ve had lots of fun developing this new initiative and we hope parents and kids find it as ‘sick’ as we did! As a parent of a 13 and 10-year old, I know only too well how language is evolving faster than ever and our colleagues notice it day-in day-out when they’re chatting to families at our cinemas.

“There’s nothing better than debriefing a film after watching it all together, hopefully this will help parents understand their kids better and enjoy those precious family moments.”

With 2019 set to be one of the biggest years for family film on record, the colleague Helping Hand training programme is just one of the initiatives with in ODEON’s new We are Family manifesto, designed to make it easier for families to spend quality time together at the cinema.