For decades, millennials have ruled the world of online slang. Words like "vibes," "lol," and "adulting" captured the essence of a generation growing up with a fast-changing internet.
Millennial slang was born out of early blogging platforms, text message shorthand and an of-its-time sense of humor, millennial slang has dominated conversations.
But according to GIPHY's 2025 Trend Forecast, the reign of millennial slang is officially coming to an end. In its place? Gen Z's unique, chaotic, and decidedly less linear approach to online language.
GIPHY, an online platform that provides a vast library of animated GIFs (Graphics Interchange Format), has analyzed millions of users' search data and found a clear trend in the way users are chatting online across social media and personal chats.
Words like "ijbol" (short for "I just burst out laughing"), "aura" (used to describe someone's vibe, but with more existential weight), and even onomatopoeic phrases like "sksksk" have skyrocketed in popularity, according to GIPHY. Meanwhile, stalwart millennial favorites such as "lol" and "vibes" are being used less and less.
But why are younger people more likely to style "ijbol" than a simple "lol"?
Millennials, aged between 28 and 43, created a digital language born from AIM chats, BuzzFeed quizzes, and Vine compilations. The developed online shorthand was practical (rotfl, brb, ttyl), but also deeply reflective of their relationship with the early internet: a space that was fun, experimental, and still relatively unpolished.
Meanwhile, Gen Z (aged 12-27), who grew up on TikTok, Discord, and Snapchat, approach online communication with a different toolkit. There is no longer a need to create phrases that are easy to type on a mobile T9 keyboard, instead, Gen Z slang seems to be shaped by meme cycles that evolve at the speed of light and a love of the group chat over online message boards.
Some of the slang terms used by Gen Z—and their younger Gen Alpha counterparts—are still leaving many people baffled. Earlier this year, experts helped millennials decode what many called the "exhausting" change in internet slang. Meanwhile, a high school teacher reportedly banned certain terms from her classroom, including "rizz," "gucci," and "sigma."
GIPHY's report also found that terms linked to group chat culture, such as "gm chat" (good morning chat) and "gn chat" (good night chat), also saw massive growth in 2024, confirming the importance of private digital communities in building popular phrases.
In these group chats, memes and new language are tested out, and eventually it may make its way into the broader cultural vernacular. By the time a term like "ijbol" hits a billion GIPHY searches, it had already cycled through countless Discord servers, TikTok trends, and group chats.
As well as GIPHY's findings, Unscramblerer.com recently released the most popular online slang terms of 2024, with the most popular online slang words this year including "demure," "sigma," "skibidi."
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English (US) ·