The following is excerpted from an online article posted by Parents
Today’s kids are a bit more savvy with their snarkiness, and they might not say things that are as easy to understand as “talk to the hand,” but they’ll embody the same energy with phrases and acronyms that are sort of incomprehensible to adults.
Such is the case with the latest phrase we can’t seem to escape—”SYBAU.” Teens and tweens use the acronym across social media and in schools, and when adults ask what it means, they typically lie about what each letter stands for.
Kids have been telling others “SYBAU” and hiding the true definition when adults question them. In one TikTok video an adult asked what the acronym truly means, and tweens flooded the comments with false answers.
One user wrote it means, “stay young, beautiful, and unique,” which seems to be the most agreed-upon response to adults.
However, “SYBAU” actually stands for “shut your b*tch a** up”—which is obviously way less nice than “stay young, beautiful, and unique.”
If you’re curious how kids are saying it, it’s pronounced several ways, with “see-bow,” “sigh-bow,” and “sea-brow” being the most common pronunciations.
The slang term “SYBAU” should definitely raise red flags for parents. Not only is it simply a disrespectful thing to say to another person, but its usage encourages a culture of lying—with kids lying about the true meaning and encouraging others to lie about it to maintain the secret.
Ultimately, many kids find “SYBAU” so entertaining because most adults either have no idea what it means or believe it’s an uplifting statement teens say to one another. Often, the kids using the term simply want an inside joke to share with others in their generation, and a reason to call you an “unc” for not knowing what it means.