 |
|
|
|||||
The teaching profession requires a certain degree of patience. Particularly when students discover a new trend to latch onto and repeat at every given opportunity. The latest so-called brain rot phrase to flood the classroom: 6-7. If you dont have any Gen Alphas in your life and have no idea what Im talking about, count yourself lucky. Some teachers have taken to social media to share their exasperation with the trend that has recently overrun classrooms, with schools outright banning it in some instances. “Say ‘6-7’ one more time,” one teacher posted on TikTok, pretending to address a student in her class. “Were gonna call your mom in about 6-7 minutes, let her know how you interrupt my class 6-7 times a day, and then maybe shell take your phone away for 6-7 days.” Teachers are going to extreme lengths to avoid saying the numberson the pages of textbooks or in answers to math equationsfor fear of triggering a commotion in the classroom. Meanwhile, some have adopted an if you cant beat em, join em” approach, turning the trend into a classroom management strategy or a learning tool. Others have taken a simpler line of attack. I choose 6 and 7 and 67 every time I need random numbers right now, which also seems to be killing the joke for the kidsbut I think its very funny, one teacher responded to a Reddit thread on r/Teachers. “I did it with a class earlier this week, and they didnt do it again, another one suggested. Nothing like a teacher doing a trend to make something uncool. Like much of Generation Alpha slang, the 6-7 trend originated on TikTok, spawning over a million related videos, before making its way into schools, basketball courts, and sports interviews. So what does “6-7” actually mean? To many parents, confusion. The numbers can be traced back to a song called Doot Doot, released by hip-hop artist Skrilla in late 2024, in which he raps: 6-7, I just bipped right on the highway (bip, bip). From there, a video of a boy yelling “6-7” into the camera at a basketball game went viral; thus was born a new meme. Its important to note that the “6-7” meme is pronounced “six, seven”not “sixty-seven or “six to seven,” as some may assume, having only seen it in writing. Its often accompanied by the hand gesture you would use to tell someone that youre weighing two options (both palms facing up, hands moving slightly up and down). Searches for Gen Alpha translator have surged 790% in the past year, making it the fastest-growing translator query, Jenny Lee, lead data analyst at Google Trends, told Axios. Meanwhile, 6-7 has emerged as the most popular search for both how to use [slang] and why do middle schools say in 2025.
Category:
E-Commerce
The other day, a friend confessed her new nightly routine: hiding in the bathroom for 10 minutes after putting her kids to bed. The reason wasnt to scroll TikTok, but to breathe. Its either that or cry into the mac and cheese, she laughed. It struck me: parenting in 2025 often looks like quietly triaging our own stress while juggling work deadlines, permission slips, Slack pings, and dinner prep. Headlines scream about the youth mental health crisis, but what rarely makes the front page is the state of the people raising those kids. Working parents are running on fumes. And heres the part we cant gloss over: our kids emotional health is directly tied to ours. As psychiatrist and neuroscientist Dr. Raghu Appasani explained to me, emotional regulation is contagious. Both the calm and the chaos are felt by children. When parents experience chronic stress or burnout, it doesnt just live in their nervous system. It shapes the familys emotional climate, he said. Even babies, before they can speak, sense our tension. Over time, parental stress can erode a childrens sense of safety, making the world feel less predictable than it is. Neuroscience backs it up. A childs developing brain learns to self-regulate by co-regulating with their parents nervous system. In other words, if were running on fumes, so are they. {"blockType":"creator-network-promo","data":{"mediaUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2015\/08\/erikaaslogo.png","headline":"Girl, Listen: A Guide to What Really Matters","description":"Ericka dives into the heat of modern motherhood, challenging the notion that personal identity must be sacrificed at the altar of parenting. ","substackDomain":"https:\/\/erickasouter.substack.com\/","colorTheme":"blue","redirectUrl":""}} The good news is, there are practical ways to flip the script, and we dont need a three-day meditation retreat to do it. A few ideas: Micro-pauses matter. Before you rush from Zoom call to carpool, take 60 seconds in the driveway to breathe. Literally. These moments act like emotional shock absorbers, resetting your nervous system so you show up calmer and more present. Leverage digital tools as check-ins, not crutches. Dr. Raghu, chief medical officer for the child-centered wellness app Ginko, recommends InsightTimer and Calm to help adults regulate stress through guided mindfulness. Other platforms, like Wysa, provide exercises to track mood and offer coping strategies. Hes also a fan of journaling tools like Daylio or Stoic, which offer quick check-ins that can help you notice when you are sliding into burnout. Pair parenting with prevention. If therapy apps like BetterHelp make it easier to fit sessions into a packed schedule, think of it as mental fitness, not just as a crisis hotline. The reality is that self-care isnt indulgence. Its infrastructure. Just like we maintain the Wi-Fi so homework can get done, we need to maintain our mental bandwidth so our kids can feel steady. Shielding them from every stressor isnt possible. But modeling how to downshift, recover, and stay connected? Thats a parenting lesson with lifelong returns. {"blockType":"creator-network-promo","data":{"mediaUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2015\/08\/erikaaslogo.png","headline":"Girl, Listen: A Guide to What Really Matters","description":"Ericka dives into the heat of modern motherhood, challenging the notion that personal identity must be sacrificed at the altar of parenting. ","substackDomain":"https:\/\/erickasouter.substack.com\/","colorTheme":"blue","redirectUrl":""}}
Category:
E-Commerce
A potentially worrisome trend is emerging among young adults. Instead of landing a job and moving to the big city after graduation, many are moving back into their childhood homes instead. About 1.5 million more adults under 35 live with their parents today than a decade ago. Thats a 6.3% jump, more than double the rate of growth for the young adult population overall. The issue is affordability. Over the past decade, urban rents have climbed about 4% per year, while wages for full-time workers have increased by only 0.6% annually. That means its harder than ever to live in a big city on the typical salaryespecially if youre a new graduate without much work experience. The situation is even more challenging for aspiring homeowners: The median house price in the U.S. has risen about 90% in just 10 years, or more than 6% each year. And as prices risethe median home sells for more than $400,000 nowso too do the ages of homebuyers. The median first-time U.S. homebuyer is 38 years old, up from 31 about a decade ago. Why is the rent so high? Put simply, there isnt enough housing. As an economist, I know that when demand rises faster than supply, prices have to increase. And supply is severely limited in the places where people most want to live: big cities such as New York and San Francisco. In most of these cities, planning and zoning laws prevent developers from building enough to meet demand. For example, rezoning a plot of land from commercial to residential often requires mountains of paperwork. And in many cities, objections from neighbors can stall a proposed development. These are just two of many obstacles local governments throw in homebuilders way. One city that has tried something different is Austin, Texas. After deliberately relaxing its zoning laws a few years ago, Austin has seen a boom in home construction. Rents fell by 10% in one year and by as much as 22% in two years after that change. By making it easier to build, Austin has made it cheaper to live there. I dont think its a coincidence that Austin has a far lower share of its young adults living with their parents than many other cities do. Just 6% of working adults in the Austin metro area live with their parents, one analysis found, versus nearly 14% in Greater San Antonio and 20% in Greater Los Angeles. The pros and cons of living with the rents One obvious advantage of living with parents is that they tend to charge below-market rents, or nothing at all. That makes it easier to save for a deposit on a house, helping young adults get on the property ladder sooner than they would otherwise. Indeed, homeownership rates among those 25 to 34 have risen slightly since 2016. There are also potential disadvantages, however, particularly when it comes to socializing. Living at home with parents can make it much more challenging to meet new people. This, in turn, could partly help explain why Americans are getting married and having children later in life. These delays might not seem important, but they can leave people feeling like theyre behind in life, which can affect their health and well-being. I also wonder whether living with parents is indirectly making young adults unhappier at work. Thats because older adults often live far from the urban centers where young people are most likely to find jobs directly related to their degrees. Job satisfaction rates are substantially lower among 18- to 29-year-olds than among the rest of the working population. A problem for the entire U.S. The housing shortage isnt just an issue for young adults. A recent analysis I found insightful was headlined The housing theory of everything. It argued that the issue helps explain at least part of the current malaise in the U.S. economy. For example, when people cant live and work where they want, theyre unable to use their talents fully. That contributes to the relatively slow productivity growth the U.S. has experienced in recent years. Similarly, if people cant live in areas where they might meet and work with like-minded individuals, they have fewer opportunities to share ideas, which can hinder innovation. And if the housing shortage is indeed encouraging young adults to delay having children, it could make it harder for the U.S. to fund Social Security and other government programs in the future. Making it easier to build new homes in places people want to live and work could go a long way to easing these problems. Its possible high rents translate into high barriers to adulthood, too. Rohan Shah is assistan professor of economics at the University of Mississippi; Institute for Humane Studies This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Category:
E-Commerce
All news |
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||