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For some time I’ve wondered if there is anything – anything at all – young people can have just for themselves, without older people trying to gatecrash the party?
A Tesco Mobile survey has revealed the slang words and phrases that generation Z uses, and which confuse their parents and older people in general. This is the traditional point when one is supposed to muse, baffled, over youth vernacular, perhaps balk at the Clockwork Orange-esque strangeness of it all.
Sure enough, there are some I don’t know: “poggers” (enthusiasm); “drip” (stylish clothes/accessories); “touch grass” (time outside). However, others I’ve heard of: “finsta” (fake Instagram account to fool parents); “NPC” (non-player character; a nobody); “clout” (influence); “rizz” (charisma); “brat” (confident, rebellious). In fact, there are quite a few on the list I already know. Too many.
First, it should be acknowledged that it is a modern parent’s inalienable human right to wind their children up by deploying their slang back at them. After picking up the phrase from Love Island, I had months of fun telling my youngest daughter not to “deep it” (overthink something). The good news: it appears that I am not the 21st-century equivalent of the 20th-century judge who hadn’t heard of the Beatles. The bad news: I could be something far worse. A pan-cultural youth-vampire, sinking my old, greedy, generation X fangs deep into the young – their words, clothes, music, TV, films – and refusing to let go. What’s more, look around, and it’s clear I’m not alone.
You’ll have heard of cultural appropriation: the hijacking of the culture of others by a dominant people or society without recognition or permission. Perhaps there’s a form of generational appropriation that involves older people commandeering youth-signifiers, to the point they leave nothing that actual young people can identify as just their own.
What music do you listen to? Is it that different from young people? Do you feel you have the full, non-embarrassed run of Spotify? What programmes do you watch? What food do you eat? Do you buy your clothes from strictly demarcated grownup shops, or do you end up online looking at jackets, shoes and tops aimed at younger people, rationalising that they won’t look like that on you, so that’s completely fine and normal?
If the urban myths are to be believed, young people can barely go to gigs or festivals without their parents trying to tag along (well, they did have to buy the tickets). They can’t rebelliously get tiny ankle tattoos because their parents have made them an uncool, middle-aged quirk. And so it goes on. For some time now, older generations haven’t just observed youth, as they have always done – they have taken from it, filleted it, sucked it dry and nourished themselves.
It’s not as if there is anything new per se about older people invading youth culture. As far back as the 1990s, tax-paying, property-owning adult men riding skateboards, and grownup professional women modelling Little Miss Naughty T-shirts, were being observed out in the wild. And, after all, where is the harm – why should people have to stiffly keep to their own age brackets, or be made to feel old before their time?
Moreover, it’s understandable that people are fascinated by younger generations, as well as, at times, alarmed and saddened. All those reports about young people shirking sex and alcohol (laudable and smart, in many ways). The pernicious effect of online porn and mobile phones (only last week, Denmark banned them from classrooms and after-school clubs). The cyclical concern about mental health (last year, one in three in the 18-24 bracket had reported mental health issues such as anxiety or depression). Has gen Z struggled a lot more than previous cohorts, or just refused to be stigmatised and silent about it?
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With gen Z, it has occurred to me before that theirs is a youth interrupted, or maybe youth postponed – almost as if they can be young later, at a less pressured and exhausting time. Which is hardly surprising, considering all the other factors making young lives dark and difficult: climate change; the pandemic; tuition fees plunging them into sinkholes of debt; war; injustice… the list sprawls on.
Still, older people being concerned about younger generations is one thing; gatecrashing their culture quite another. In all the debates that periodically ignite about gen Z, amid the constant scrutiny and conjecture, are we guilty of forgetting that they’ve been deprived all along of the one thing most older people could take for granted: a youth-scape to call their own? As for “Where’s the harm?”, are we kidding ourselves?
In the realm of music alone, older generations might have inadvertently helped to hike up the costs, and price young people out. If older people weren’t involved in elite big-ticket pop concerts and music festivals (paying for their children, or actually attending), would there be any justification (or market) for them preposterously costing hundreds of pounds? Beyond mere student discounts, should there be official age-tested sharply reduced tickets so that actual young people can afford them?
Similarly, concern over mobile phones in classrooms is reasonable, but perhaps phones are one of the few spaces where young people achieve a modicum of generational privacy and agency. And what is slang if not an attempt to have a private, secret language (like Polari was back when it was illegal and dangerous to be gay). Is that why teenagers update it so often – they want to keep it just for themselves, locking out nosy fogies like me?
At this late stage of what could be termed generational osmosis, there is no stuffing the genie back into the bottle, but we could at least be aware. Listen, fam, no need to deep it. Just sometimes, back off, and let the young have some cultural space to themselves.
Barbara Ellen is an Observer columnist
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