Why do teenagers use abbreviations

Anderson Cooper. Brian Todd. Alisyn Camerota. He went from playing the trumpet to playing "Jeopardy" John Berman.

She went from junior high to CNN's senior political correspondent. Brianna Keilar. She's not done climbing. She will go on to climb Mount Kilimanjaro. Brooke Baldwin. This Louisiana native never lost his skateboarding skills.

Don Lemon. Don't let the hair throw you off. He becomes a doctor with a list of very famous patients. Drew Pinsky. Some kids dream of becoming the President. This one became the president of CNN. Jeff Zucker. He helped Bill Clinton win the presidential election. To understand an abbreviation, it's important to know the spelling of a word, so it can often be helpful to shorten things and use acronyms.

Language has changed since the time you were a teen, too. Not many people say "boss" to mean cool anymore, and no teens are saying "far out! That's just how language works.

Text-speak is just this generation's version of "right on," and doesn't mean that English is going down the drain. You probably remember your parents saying similar things to you when you were growing up.

That's just how parents feels when they realize they're out of the trendy language loop. As soon as texting came on the scene, the English language began to be shaped by the new technology. Typing " gr8 " was simply easier than typing out "great," and it was more fun, too.

It was like having your own secret code that only you and your friends knew. That's part of the appeal for teens as well. This is an escalation point. Two people speaking on social media are taking this to the next level Most of these acronyms are designed to convey messages without the parent realizing the conversation happening within their very presence. PAL is a tip-off that is sure to silence the other party, or at the very least, will act as a topic change from the current conversation.

KMS: Kill Myself. This may be used sarcastically or it can be used as a cry for help when a teen is serious about acting out on the implied definition of this abbreviation. TINA: Meth. Also the drug, concealed cleverly within a name. Teens are clever when it comes to concealing information. Sometimes they use code that involves numbers, just to make it that much more difficult for parents to decipher the conversations.

Here are a few basic examples with which you may want to get familiar. For those who are unaware, this references April 20th, the 4th month and 20th day, which is a day of celebrating the use of marijuana.

We've Added New Words! With every generation come cries that teenagers are destroying the language with their newfangled slang. In fact, linguists say teenagers, far from destroying English, are innovating and enriching the language. First of all, abbreviations like haha , lol , omg , brb , and btw are more infrequent than you might imagine, according to a paper by Sali A.