Facebook and YouTube overtaken by Twitch: are video games changing our language?

With increasingly fast connections, the 21st century sees players from all over the world meet regularly on the web to challenge each other. Or, more simply, to follow the “live” of their favorite streamers on Twitch, Facebook or YouTube. Between multiplayer challenge and “live stream”, the world of video games is undoubtedly revolutionizing the language of new generations.

Boosted by the Covid-19 pandemic

Since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, and with the many periods of confinement experienced by the whole world, the world of gaming, and more particularly the Twitch platform, has seen their number of views and new subscribers increase significantly. spectacular with + 78.5% compared to 2019, until reaching the 24.8 million users in 2020.
That is why Babbel, the world’s first language learning app, created the infographic “Streaming generation: do you speak” gaming “? », Which presents the growing development of video games in recent years and the use of new expressions and terms that have become commonplace.

Gaming figures: we hardly believe it!

In 7 years, the number of amateur streaming users has quadrupled: if YouTube Gaming has seen the hours of content viewed doubling (6.19 billion) and Facebook Gaming tripling them (3.1 billion), Twitch is indeed the most used online platform, with 140 million subscribers and more than 5,436 million hours viewed in 2020.

Coded language

The world of gaming has developed a very specific coded language, which is now in common use among the young generation: there are international terms like AFK (Away From Keyboard) or GG (Good Game), as well as French expressions such as than Amha (IMHO) and MJ (Game Master).

Finally, French, used by 4% of Twitch users, is the 6th language, while English (57%) and Spanish (9.5%) are the most used languages.