Suicide is the second leading cause of death among people ages 10-24, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and suicide rates for that age group increased more than 50% from 2000-2021. “Whoever says ‘unalive’ intends to communicate something about suicide, and knows that, and assumes that whoever is on the other end will be able to retrieve that intention,” Beltrama says. Beyond being interesting linguistic footnotes, the terms suggest ways that kids can safely discuss and understand serious matters while using a vocabulary that science - and the adults in their lives - might see as too casual or dangerously naive.

In this case, words created within a digital setting to evade rules are now jumping the fences from virtual spaces into real ones and permeating spoken language, especially among young people. But the internet and online life pave the way for it to happen more quickly. It can function as adjective or verb and joins similar phrasing - like “mascara,” to mean sexual assault - coined by social media users as a workaround to fool algorithms on sites and apps that censor posts containing discussion of explicit or violent content. “Unalive” refers to death by suicide or homicide. “These are kids who’ve had to learn English and are now learning TikToklish,” Litman says. Her students don’t use - and perhaps have never even heard - English words like “suicide.” But they know “unalive.”

Litman, 46, teaches English as a second language to students in Jersey City. When Emily Litman was in middle school, kids whose parents grounded them would blithely lament: “I just want to die.” Now she’s a middle school teacher in New Jersey, and when her students’ phones and TikTok access are taken away, their out-loud whining has a 21st-century digital twist: “I feel so unalive.”

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