Gen Alpha: The surprisingly deep reason why teens are calling everyone “chat.”

Shyla Carter was recently beefing with a classmate. “I don’t know, chat.” Carter likes using the word “chat” to address people. Like, ‘Yo chat, come here.’ ” “I think it shows that young people value inclusivity in group interactions, and I love that about this generation.” Peralta, who teaches drama to students in kindergarten through sixth grade, said that it’s not uncommon nowadays to see the structures of social media–comment etiquette bleed into interpersonal interactions among his students. “I can’t say I’m from Ohio,” he said, referencing the popular, post-ironic replacement slang term for cringe that quickly became oversaturated as more mainstream attention was brought to it, “or I’ll just lose the class.” Of course, among older people, anything involving children and the internet is primed to inspire concern. “One friend said that Gen Alpha has grown up witnessing confrontations—think ‘Karen’ memes, where people aggressively confront others in public,” Intlekofer said.