The Word of 2025 Is ‘Slop,’ Says Merriam-Webster. Why This Matters for Family Safety

Merriam-Webster announced that its Word of the Year was “slop,” an old word with a new meaning. 

“Slop” first appeared in the 1700s to describe soft mud. In the 1800s, it came to mean food waste, as in “pig slop,” and later evolved to describe something of little or no value — rubbish, filler, something not worth much attention.

Today, the word has taken on a new meaning: digital content of low quality, produced in large quantities by artificial intelligence. Think absurd videos, recycled advice, weird advertising images, cheesy propaganda, fake news, talking cats, and AI-written books or videos.

At first glance, this may sound like a cultural complaint — annoying content, too much scrolling, general internet fatigue. But for families, “slop” is also a safety issue. 

From slop to scams: low-quality content lowers defenses

When children and teens get used to low-quality, mass-produced content, they also get used to content that feels strange but believable. That matters because modern scams don’t look obviously fake anymore. Content that once would have raised red flags now feels… normal.

A grandmother scrolling Facebook may not find it especially odd when a message appears from “Kevin Costner,” asking her for money so he can release funds tied up in a contract. She has already seen dozens of AI-generated celebrity videos, fake interviews, and sponsored posts that blur the line between real and staged. When famous faces appear everywhere online, speaking directly to the camera, the idea that a celebrity could reach out personally doesn’t feel that impossible anymore.

Related: We Worry About Kids’ Screen Time, but Our Parents Spend Even More Time Online. What That Means for Families

A child who regularly watches exaggerated, AI-enhanced videos may genuinely believe they are speaking live with MrBeast after clicking a link promising a giveaway. The format looks familiar, the tone feels right, and the excitement is real. 

Related: What Parents Need to Know About MrBeast Scams

Misinformation, impersonation, and fraud are spread because the same fake patterns show up again and again, until they start to feel normal. When that happens, even very strange claims stop standing out.

There is hope in “slop,” too

There’s something hopeful about the word “slop,” too. Calling something “slop” is a way of pushing back of naming what feels wrong and wanting something better instead. 

That’s the real opportunity for families, as awareness itself is one of the strongest forms of safety we have.

Digital safety tools can help here, too. No parent can clean up the entire internet on their own. But you can shape what flows into your home.

Family protection tools don’t remove slop from the world, but they can:

• reduce exposure to it
• flag scams and suspicious links, downloads, or fake giveaways
• limit endless scrolling that makes low-quality content harder to resist
• give parents visibility into what kids are encountering online

Find out more about your family safety plan, here.

Note: To select the Word of the Year, Merriam-Webster’s editors review which words have surged in searches and usage, then choose the one that best reflects the year.

Other terms that made the 2025 shortlist included 6/7, a viral joke with no fixed meaning; performative, often used to describe actions or online behavior that appear meaningful or kind but are mostly done for attention; and touch grass, a phrase urging people to step away from screens and reconnect with real life.