When was the last time you heard someone say the phrase “what the sigma”? 

Whether you have said these words out of your own mouth or read them for the first time in this article, there is no escaping the new phenomenon known as ‘Brainrot’.

A new generation, known as ‘Generation Alpha’ (children under the ages of 14), is now emerging; and many older people consider this daunting, because this group of children is slowly taking over the internet, one click at a time.

Slang words, just from a few years ago, like ‘slay’ and ‘sus’, are now considered vintage, uncool and outdated.

New unintelligible and confusing words, like ‘skibidi and ‘sigma’ are becoming more popular amongst children, and adults don’t know what to do about it.

I recently had the pleasure to interview Timothy James, a primary school teacher based in Cardiff about this issue.

To begin, has teaching this particular group of children been different to the rest?

I have had a varied career since graduating in 2006 and I’ve been privileged to teach children of all age groups. However, I’ve noticed an influx, particularly in the past year, of different vocabularies with these particular age groups (under 14).

Have these new slang words affected your teaching?

The culture these words have stimulated amongst ‘generation alpha’ has definitely made it difficult to teach, as the children are in this world adults are not familiar with.

Some of these terms that have come into circulation, such as ‘rizz’ and ‘sigma’, are almost by very nature designed to combat the language and to simplify english- and I think there are so many implications attached to those words, making it so hard to adapt to teach.

Why do you think this language trend is so popular amongst this age group in particular?

I feel the lack of social life children had during Covid had a real effect on them when engaging them back into education.

Children were stuck at home bombarded with culture and content- in a way, I think this helped children to connect with each other when returning to school, as some shared this online culture.
However, as a teacher, I found that their attention span worsened which has made it difficult in a school setting.

Overall, whether this new slang is harmless fun, and a way for kids to take part in modern culture- or detrimental to a child’s speech development and attention span, this new culture, known as ‘brainrot’ is taking the internet by storm.