Screen Time: Ryu Spaeth

The ‘Six Seven’ Panic Adolescent slang has always been impenetrable to adults. That’s the point.

- 

ALL ACROSS THE COUNTRY, clueless fathers are asking their tweens and teens the same question: “What is ‘Six Seven’?” This question is being met with gales of laughter and an identical response: “It doesn’t mean anything, Dad”—the emphasis on that title, which not so long ago was wreathed with the sweet breath of filial affection, serving to punctuate their scorn. “No, really,” the especially dense father might persist. “It has to mean something!” More delighted laughter, more eye-rolling at this supreme display of parental idiocy. “It’s just ‘Six Seven,” they say, moving their hands like they're juggling an invisible ball.

Since at least the spring, “Six Seven” has been the bane of middle-school classrooms, a social-media-fueled wildfire that has burned without abating. One teacher in Texas told The Wall Street Journal, “If you're like, ‘Hey, you need to do questions six, seven,’ they just immediately start yelling, ‘Six Seven!’” On the r/Teachers sub-Reddit, under the subject line “WTF is 6 7??,” dozens of users suggest strategies for how teachers can deal with the scourge, including making the trend “cringe” by saying “Six Seven” themselves or, my personal favorite, singing the chorus of “867-5309/Jenny,” by Tommy Tutone. Since their children are no help, parents have been turning to overstimulating explainer videos on TikTok for answers, a parasitic trend that is only slightly less grating than “Six Seven” itself.

And it is ubiquitous. A colleague of mine said that, for a recent book report, her son had chosen the title I Survived the Attack of the Grizzlies, 1967: The Graphic Novel. Another wrote in Slack, “Can you imagine my 10-year-old’s reaction when I told him the weather report today was a high of 67?” A recent episode of South Park featured Peter Thiel cracking down on a “cult involving the numbers six and seven” after students shouted the numbers at him.