In the digital age, language seems to be evolving at an unprecedented rate. It is my understanding that this growth is driven primarily by Generation Z — those born between 1997 and 2012 — whose immersion in online spaces often involves new slang. While linguistic evolution is natural, the rise of “netspeak” and “leetspeak” among social media users concerns me, particularly regarding their impact on language itself. This concern is not only for Gen Z but for others who would simply like to stay informed, unencumbered by complex (and oftentimes unnecessary) linguistic creations.
“Netspeak” broadly encompasses the informal language, abbreviations, shorthand and slang used in online communication by so-called “net-speakers” while “leetspeak” involves substituting letters with numbers or symbols (e.g., “s3x” to replace “sex”). Communication of this type is gradually becoming first nature to Gen Z. Having grown up with smartphones and social media as integral to our lives, net and leetspeak are tempting when exigency is required in communicating certain needs. My opinion, though, is that the emergence of these sublanguages marks a surrender to the exigent nature of media. Rather than taking the time to sit with words, to embrace the harsh realities of words such as “kill” rather than “k1ll,” we shield ourselves to the point of altering the English language. While I am aware that leetspeak is currently an important hermeneutic in avoiding digital censorship, it is also setting an uncomfortable precedent for future instances of censorship. Once “kill” turns to “k1ll,” and “k1ll” to “k111” and “k111” to “|<111,” I predict there will be little room left for genuine linguistic expression.
If we allow this evolution to continue without personal or joint reflection, I believe the consequences will become deeply political. The degradation of language under the ruse of avoiding censorship should not be viewed trivially; it comprises our most basic interpretive faculties. The capacity to speak clearly and uniformly about domestic violence, injustice, death, sex, racism, misogyny, state-ordered killings, genocide and other deeply troubling phenomena is indispensable to the democratic public. When language is precluded from expressing what it is intended to, when it is softened and abstracted for the sake of compliance, we lose our right to expression as well as the purpose of language itself.
The leetspeak substitution of “sex” with “s3x” or the netspeak substitution of “suicide” with “unalive” may first seem like a harmless attempt to circumvent the algorithms that are programmed to remove certain words from social media. In reality, I believe this signals a disappointing resignation to the surveillance and linguistic gatekeeping of corporate media. The substitutions of leetspeak and netspeak are cleverly tactical, but they encourage a culture where uncomfortable truths are not confronted but are instead euphemized into silly caricatures of themselves. In my opinion, self-censorship on social media — which often reduces multifaceted issues to oversimplified terms — creates an unbreachable gap between online discourse and scholarly research. While narratives on social media can be extremely raw, painful and cathartic, censoring language to appease the platform itself should not be our go-to. Instead of shaping speech to fit the rules of apps that could shift their policies at any moment for any reason, we should turn to experts, communicate with scholars, engage with the literature and speak openly with one another outside of these apps rather than make our freedoms hinge on nonhuman algorithms.
Generation Z, likely more so than any generational cohort before it, is being conditioned to speak, write and think in consideration of algorithmic surveillance. Media theorist José van Dijck in 2013 referred to this process as platform sociality — a mode of self-expression that is necessarily curated, altered and adjudicated according to the protocols outlined by capitalistic media companies. When language pertaining to suffering or entailing any critique becomes “unspeakable” according to these platform overlords, a user internalizes self-restraint as well as a corrupted lexical index that is properly suited for survivability, not clarity.
I do not believe that the transition from “kill” to “k1ll” to “unalive” is simply lexical. More accurately, it is a symptom of the pathologization of speech. It is a case of semantic bleaching where words lose their force due to obfuscation (though also to misuse and overuse). Unlike historical cases of bleaching which often progress organically through the refinement of vernacular (e.g., the use of the word “literally”), digital bleaching is deliberately enforced. For this reason, I think language is not only devolving but also being deactivated. It is moving in the wrong direction. Social media is sometimes presented as a democratizing tool but in reality functions as a linguistic prison, reducing the breadth of what we can or should say. In this way, Gen Z’s inclination toward netspeak and leetspeak is not an adaptation. It is capitulation to the demands of restrictive and callous platforms. I believe that if expression is actively becoming a performance for algorithms rather than a dialogue among real people, we are willingly giving up our freedom of discourse. Language seems to be becoming a tool of evasion rather than a tool of protest. If we allow ourselves — Gen Z or not — to be subsumed by the convenience of netspeak and leetspeak, we may soon find ourselves scholars of only shallow and cowardly euphemism, incapable of saying anything that truly matters.
