"Tbh," the acronym that stands for "to be honest," has taken on a different meaning since it was first adopted by teens. The Washington Post recently profiled a 13-year-old girl and focused on her social-media use. She explained that on Instagram, a "tbh" is used to say something nice about your friends. "[This girl] gets so many likes on her pictures because she’s posted over nine pictures saying, 'Like all my pictures for a tbh, comment when done,'" she told The Washington Post.
"So everyone will like her pictures, and she’ll just give them a simple tbh." While "tbh" still means "to be honest" or sometimes "to be heard," it's no longer associated with an insult ("I'm just being honest!"), but with compliments. In The Washington Post's example, the teen girl, after getting her likes, would then write a simple "tbh you're pretty" on commenters' pictures. It was still a little confusing, so we turned to today's teens to break it down further for us. I asked a few Instagram-savvy high-schoolers to explain to me (through text, where else?) what a tbh means to them.
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