While attending Atlanta’s pop culture and sci-fi convention Dragon Con, my younger brother’s friend looked at me and said, “Hey, I’m going aura farming,” before sprinting off into the crowd. By the time my brother explained what that meant, another phrase (6-7) had already taken over my TikTok feed.

If it feels like kids are speaking in riddles, that’s because they are. But they always have. Boomers had “groovy.” Gen X said “whatever.” Millennials had “YOLO.” Gen Z gave us “slay.”

Now, Gen Alpha — the first generation raised entirely online — is speaking a language shaped by memes, irony and speed. As linguist Adam Aleksic told CBS Mornings , algorithms have become “a new inflection point for language,” influencing which words stick and how they spread.

At Beacon Middle School in De

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