Baffling Slang Your Teen Is Using: ‘Aura’

Another day, another trend we can barely keep up with. Seriously, just when us olds start to wrap our heads around Gen Z terms like “rizz” and “chat,” and acronyms like “IJBOL” (seriously, what was wrong with “lol”?!), something new comes along. And at risk of sounding like a geriatric, it’s hard to keep up! If you’ve been hearing your teen talk about their “aura” lately, it’s probably not what you think. While Millennials and above use this term to refer to someone’s spiritual surroundings or distinctive atmosphere (i.e., “they have a good aura”), younger generations are more likely talking about something entirely different.

If someone is talking about their “aura” or “aura count” for the day, they are referring to their “cool points,” per Distractify.This is both a slang term and a TikTok trend. Basically, teens will document different cool or embarrassing things that happen to them throughout the day, and label them with a number of points. (Like Drew Carey would say, everything’s made up and the points don’t matter.)

For example, someone might assign themselves -523 points when a car doesn’t wait for them to cross the crosswalk, like in this TikTok. Or they might gain 2,000 aura points from walking to school with new shoes, like in this TikTok. There’s not a set system — teens are pretty much just assigning whatever number they feel like to be funny.

Some kids might track their overall aura over the whole day, or they might just post one-off things. You can also add aura points to real-life moments or recreate them for a video. It’s almost like a way to gamify life — and it can also be a good reminder that one awkward interaction shouldn’t actually ruin your whole day because you never know what else could happen. (Or, that could just be me as a mom reading way too much into this trend.)

Now that you understand aura, it might help you understand your teen a little bit more. Of course, if you use aura in front of them, it’s going to knock off some major aura points from their counters because of how uncool parents are as a general rule. So use this knowledge wisely!