There's a speech trend that's becoming increasingly prevalent among young women today, and it's called vocal fry.

Best described as a female's voice descending into a lower register as they complete a sentence, it's becoming more and more common among young women as vocal fry users like Kim Kardashian and Britney Spears saturate the media. Unfortunately, according to communication expert Diane DiResta, adolescent girls are subconsciously adopting this speech pattern, and it's limiting their employment opportunities.

"There was a study by Florida Atlantic University and they determined that women who had vocal fry were perceived as less competent, less educated and less trustworthy and less hirable," she told HuffPost Live on Thursday.*

Hear more about the negative implications of vocal fry in the clip above, and get a better idea of what vocal fry actually entails in the clip below.

Watch the whole HuffPost Live segment on vocal fry here.

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*Clarification: One of the authors of this study clarified to HuffPost Live that while she currently works at Florida Atlantic, the study referred to by Dianne DiResta was actually a study conducted by Duke University, and not by Florida Atlantic.