Dark side of digitization leaves mark on most popular words of 2025

ISTANBUL

The rising impact of social media and artificial intelligence (AI) left a lasting impact on language in 2025 as terms related to the negative outcomes of digitization became the most popular words of the year.

Major dictionary publishers pick their own word of the year every year to identify prominent terms but also to reflect the technological, sociological and psychological transformation the year brought to people.

The Oxford Dictionary started this trend by picking the “face with tears of joy” emoji as the “word” of the year in 2015.

In recent years, there has been an obvious shift in the word of the year from simple yet tech-related terms like “emoji,” “app” or “selfie” to more complex and ethical and psychology-related terms like “post-truth,” “gaslighting,” and one that’s emerged from Türkiye: “digital conscience.”

Oxford picked “post-truth” as its word of the year in 2016, as social media-originating manipulation campaigns were prominent on the global agenda.

Collins Dictionary named “fake news” as its word of the year in 2017, which was followed by the Cambridge Analytica scandal involving Facebook in 2018 that provided a massive real-world example of the mechanisms behind the phenomenon.

Collins Dictionary named “artificial intelligence” as the word of 2023 after ChatGPT was released and generative artificial intelligence (AI) became a global hot topic. Cambridge Dictionary picked “hallucinate” as its word of that year to make a reference to how AI sometimes hallucinates and provides incorrect information.

Oxford University Press picked “brain rot” as its word of 2024. The choice was made due to the prevalence of excessive consumption of trivial or non-challenging social media posts and even nonsensical posts, especially in the form of short-term content like TikTok videos, which garnered significant popularity among young people. This “brain rot” content typically doesn’t feature any content of real substance or meaning.

Oxford University Press declared “rage bait” as the word of the year in 2025. The term refers to content deliberately designed to instill anger, hatred or disappointment in a provoking manner to trigger engagement on online platforms. The term also generally refers to a sort of devil’s advocate act to “bait” interlocutors in regular conversations to spur reactions out of them through provocation.

Merriam-Webster chose “slop” as its word of the year in 2025. The term “slop” in the current Internet culture context refers to generative AI content that is of low quality and low effort, produced in large quantities, such as in commercials or in books written with AI.

Cambridge Dictionary picked “parasocial” as its word of the year, which refers to a one-sided relationship. The term mostly refers to when an individual thinks they have a relationship with a celebrity, fictional character, or even with AI chatbots in this digital era.

Turkish Language Association chooses ‘digital conscience’ as word of 2025

Meanwhile, the Turkish Language Association (TDK) picked “digital conscience” as its word of the year, led by the problems caused by technology and digitalization.

“Digital conscience” refers to how people tend to ease their conscience simply by liking or posting content on social media concerning issues they often do not take personal responsibility for or do not want to care for in real life. The concept emphasizes the passivity of individual sensitivity that the excessive use of social media brought upon masses while reducing conscience to a few clicks.

An example of digital conscience could be when during the George Floyd protests in 2020, advocates of the Black Lives Matter movement posted “black squares” on Instagram and other social media platforms to show support. While a simple and small gesture such as this could very well make an impact, the term “digital conscience” implies that individuals feel like they have done enough by the smallest effort or amount of action for the causes they believe in, or want to appear to believe in, while bringing about no visible progress.

TDK said that people “who leave likes, share, and comment under content feel as though their conscience is content, that they fulfilled their humane duty via a simple click.”

“It limits the feelings of compassion and mercy to a mere symbolic visibility; therefore, the term ‘digital conscience’ describes this new and often misleading function that conscience has taken on in this digital era,” it said.