Teenagers these days have their own way of communicating with their peers that many parents find hard to understand.
In an effort to help make it easier for parents to decipher teen language, the U.K. government has refreshed its online guide to Internet slang terms, which are used by youngsters to communicate about sexually-related topics in particular.
The list used to appear outdated but last week it was unveiled by Education Secretary Nicky Morgan, who believes that parents should stay informed about secret codes to keep their children safe when going online.
In the government website called Parent Info, parents can find acronyms their kids could use when engaging in social media and they include PAW (parents are watching), LMIRL (let's meet in real life), and even a risky GNOC (get naked on camera), as stated in a report from the Guardian.
Most of the terms stated in the guide have something to do with online sexual relationships.
Parent Info offers more than just the Internet slang guide, but it also provides tips to help parents understand their teenagers' lives and give them the confidence to tackle about sensitive issues with their young kids.
Meanwhile, it appears that the list provided by the website doesn't seem to make sense to some teenagers.
The Telegraph's Helena Horton consulted some of the teenagers on what they think about the list of acronyms provided in Parent Info.
Most of them were not convinced by the guide at all and some even insisted they haven't heard or used any of the words that appeared on the site, except for 420, which is a code for marijuana.
One 18-year-old Olivia Clarke said she's never encountered the acronyms and doesn't really use Internet slang when she's on social media or chatting online.
But if she does use them, she still goes for the popular "gtg" for "got to go" or "lol" for "laughing out loud," among others.
Another 18-year-old Livvy Tait expressed her surprise over the guide. She was quoted in the report from The Telegraph saying, "OMG I've never seen those before! Urm I don't really use a lot of slang but there are slang words and jokes that are popular on Twitter that we use, but they aren't about having sex chat at all."
To top it off, 17-year-old Tim Salt described the guide as "dreadful" and he even gave away an important message.
"Most teenagers would use none of these 'lingos' in texts/messages because they are fundamentally wrong for the purpose of being a teenager."
