Colin Sheridan: 'Six-seven' is the most irritating — and wonderful — nonsense of 2025

A new meaningless teen catchphrase is driving parents to distraction — and revealing just how wide the generational language gap has become

Kids don’t just say 'six-seven', hell no, they perform it. They flick their hand vaguely in the air — palm up, fingers loose — as if they’re swatting away a fruit fly that dared to ask a personal question. 

There was a time when numbers meant something. Quantifiable things. They built pyramids and balanced bank accounts. They told you exactly how many pints deep you needed to be before you sang American Pie at a wedding. Numbers were sensible, upright and dignified. 

Then, sometime in the year of our lord 2025, numbers abandoned all that made them great and joined the circus of youth culture. They pierced their eyebrows, started wearing oversized hoodies, and rebranded themselves as vibes. Thus we arrive at “six-seven”. 

If you’ve never heard a child or teenager say this, congratulations on your perfect life. For the rest of us, “six-seven” is the youngster's Swiss Army knife of replies. It’s not an answer so much as an atmosphere. A cosmic shrug in numeric form.

“How was school?” “Six-seven.” “How’d the exam go?” “Six-seven.” “How are you feeling? Hungry? Exhausted? Philosophically adrift?” “Eh… six-seven.” 

But the pièce de résistance is not the indifferent verbal delivery, it’s the hand gesture. Because kids don’t just say “six-seven”, hell no, they perform it. They flick their hand vaguely in the air — palm up, fingers loose — as if they’re swatting away a fruit fly that dared to ask a personal question. 

It’s a sort of horizontal wiggle, the gesture of someone too emotionally drained to commit to an opinion but not so drained that they can’t do a bit of casual mime work. It’s half shrug, half semaphore, and fully maddening. 

The message is clear: this conversation is beneath me, and yet here I am, heroically tolerating your parental pedanticism.

Nobody seems to know where “six-seven” really came from. Parents whisper theories on WhatsApp groups like archaeologists decoding hieroglyphs. Some reckon it’s a misheard sports score, others blame TikTok, naturally, because blaming TikTok for modern communication failures is the only thing millennials can still agree on.

What makes 'six-seven' truly beautiful — yes, beautiful — is that it means absolutely nothing. Nothing! A hollow phrase in a world that now insists everything must be packed with symbolism, subtext, identity, meaning, meaning, meaning, and a little more meaning.

There’s a rumour it began as a typo in a group chat and spread like digital fungus. My own theory? It’s the final evolutionary form of the teenage grunt. Prehistoric youth grunted. 90s youth muttered. Today’s youth emote in numeric code and garnish it with interpretive dance.

But what makes “six-seven” truly beautiful — yes, beautiful — is that it means absolutely nothing. Nothing! A hollow phrase in a world that now insists everything must be packed with symbolism, subtext, identity, meaning, meaning, meaning, and a little more meaning.

You can’t buy a pen these days without it being part of a wider cultural conversation about sustainable forestry and personal identity. And yet kids, in their infinite chaotic wisdom, have cannibilised a phrase so meaningless it could be used as packing material.

Naturally, parents are going clinically mad trying to decode it. We analyse context, tone, facial micro-expressions. We Google it and get only confused blog posts and targeted ads for family therapists named Willow. We stare at our kids like we’re Columbo: searching for clues in the way they drop their school bags from hand-to-floor.

Meanwhile, the kids gaze back at us the way a barista looks at someone who pronounces “latte” like “lotty.” Equal parts pity and disdain.

We need to be gentle with ourselves here. Because this — this linguistic void — is just the latest performance in the long-running sitcom of parents trying to understand their kids. 

Every generation of parents arrives with the delusion they will be the cool ones. They’ll be different. They’ll understand. They’ll wear trainers that don’t look like orthopaedic footwear. They'll throw around phrases like “no cap” despite not fully grasping its meaning. 

And every generation of kids snuffs out that delusion with ruthless efficiency. Parents think coolness is something you can hang onto with optimism and hair product, but children know the truth: parental coolness expires the moment they reach double digits.

Einstein could easily have added a clause to relativity: As a child's age increases, the perceived coolness of the parent approaches zero. If the parent tries to reclaim coolness, the universe punishes them accordingly. 

Yet within all this absurdity lies the heart of it. The generational gap — the miscommunication, the eye rolls, the hand-fluttering “six-seven” dismissal — THAT’S where the fun is. That’s the sweet spot. The little friction that proves everyone is alive and trying.

Parents think they’re attempting to decode a phrase. Really, they’re performing the ancient ritual of caring too much. Teenagers think they’re being aloof. Really, they’re just signalling that they're just finding their way, slowly becoming their own humans, using nonsense syllables as scaffolding.

So the next time your teenager says “six-seven” while flapping their hand like a bored Italian waiter waving away an extra Parmesan offer, don’t panic. Don’t interrogate. Don’t spiral. Just nod. Calmly. Maybe offer a “Well in, kid, well in.” 

Act as though you understand the mysteries of childhood existence — even though you don’t, won’t, and never will. Because in a world drowning in meaning, maybe the most refreshing thing of all is something that doesn’t mean a single, solitary thing.

Maybe “six-seven” isn’t an answer. Maybe it’s a reminder that not everything has to be one.