Digital Culture and Social Media Slang of Gen Z

Social media slang has been widespread due to the fast emerging trend of online platforms. This slang in fact manifest the culture of the digital natives called the Gen Zers or those who belong to Generation Z. This study focused on digital culture and social media slang of Gen Z. It sought to determine the digital culture present in their language and its perceived effect to their conversational language and essay. This is a descriptive study that used quantitative and qualitative methods. Documentary analysis was used to determine the Gen Z slang used by the Grade 10 students of Pamurayan Integrated School, SY 2020-2021. The students’ Facebook posts and messages in Messenger were the corpora utilized in the analysis. Meanwhile, semi-structured interviews and survey questionnaires were the tool utilized to gather the data and to investigate the perceived effects in conversational language and essays of students and how do teachers respond to it. It was found out that Gen Z slang underwent specific and sometimes multiple morphological processes and reflect its digital culture. It also aids students in language fluency, communication skills and help them gain confidence but create a language barrier for the older generation and have a negative impact on their writing skills. Therefore, Gen Z slang was not encouraged during class discussions and in writing essays but allowed when talking only among themselves. Based on the results of this study, the researcher developed a self-learning guide entitled Flexin’ the Trend to address the communication gap in the school community which is composed of different generations.