ST. LOUIS -- Social media, it's hard to find a tween or teen who doesn't use it. But did you know there's a secret code they use to communicate? A code that's main objective is to "KPC" – Keep Parents Clueless. Five On Your Side's Ann Allred is helping parents crack the secret code.
Texting, Twitter, Snapchat, it's the way tweens and teens stay connected.
St. Charles County School Resource officer Ron Neupert has spent nearly two decades working with students.
"There's absolutely no way getting around it," says Officer Neupert. "You have to deal with this one way, shape, or another."
Photos | Secret codes of social media
And in the a high tech world where smartphones take the place of face to face conversations, parents know it's hard to keep track of kids on social media. Officer Neupert says it's what parents don't know that can be an even bigger problem.
"It started with things as simple as "LOL", "Laugh Out Loud", or "IDK", "I Don't Know", simply things like that, but now it has progressed," says Officer Neupert.
Acronyms like, "PIR", "Parents in Room" and "LMIRL", "Let's Meet in Real Life." They're secret codes your kids don't want you to know about. So "Five on Your Side" gathered a group of parents and put them to the test.
In our group, only one parent got three answers right, that's 3 codes out of 40. Guss and Karin Markwell's 12-year-old daughter got her smartphone a few months ago.
"I didn't know any of them," says Guss Markwell. He says he checks his daughter's messages every couple of days.
"Does she know?" "Sometimes," says Markwell, "She does now."
"I guess we just have to educate ourselves," says Karin Markwell. "It's just not fast enough, my daughter knows more about technology now than us, even my 7-year-old, that's scary."
Eric Nelson's the mom of a 16-year-old.
"Shocking, it was shocking," says Nelson. "I came in thinking I would know more, on some of the acronyms being used, the codes, but I faild the test miserably."
Nelson admits her lack of knowledge can be nerve wracking.
"Because you don't know, you might grab their phone checking it thinking one thing and they could have this whole other life, so to speak, going on and you would be clueless," says Nelson.
Officer Neupert advises parents to not only educate themselves and talk to their children.
"If you see some strange unusual acronyms on your child's phone, which you should be looking at anyhow, it's really time to sit down and have a conversation with your child," says Neupert.
He says to tween and teens, his rule is simple.
"Don't do anything on there that your grandparents wouldn't want to see," says Officer Neupert. "Then you'll be safe, you'll know exactly what to put on there."
THE SECRET CODES OF TEENS: MORE THAN 100 COMMON TEXT AND SOCIAL MEDIA ACRONYMS
