The first time I realized that the english language was going be changed by tablet and computer technology like never before, was when my 3 year old, at the time, announced at the park that he wanted to go to the “Next Level”. I pointed at the other side of the park and asked “Is that the Next Level over there?” His answer was yes. Next, we got into an argument and I told him no about something. Can’t remember what it was. He announced that mommy was check and daddy is an X.
We immediately knew this was from letting him play on an iPad. We had let him play learning games on his iPad 1. He had taken the little forms and methods of using play and learning games and applied it to us. It sounded funny, and we all had a laugh. It had less to do with computer games destroying his mind, but rather the computer systems or iPad had given him comparative tools to explain things in ways that we had not heard before.
Fast forward 2 years later and there seems to be a lot of these words that he uses at times. The big one we hear from him and his older brother is Glitch. They announce when the game is stuck or broken or dies that there is a Glitch. It is when they take this out of the tech world and say something like my arm has a Glitch. You have to wonder what is going on inside their brains.
The other word they seem to apply to everything is upgrade. Daddy are you going to get an upgrade? This would be in reference to getting me fixed up at the doctor or maybe a nicer meal at a restaurant. The other work they use a lot is Hack. Are you going to hack it daddy? This means that we are going to use some secretive method to do it, whatever it is. They have picked up on the series Life Hacks.
I guess the English language is changing before our eyes and these words are going to be more and more common. It is not that they are not incorrect, its that they tech world is coming to the non-tech world. The application of the words make sense, but it is like the robot learning about the world. These kids brought up on tablets are like little computers learning the world and applying what they know to it.