ABSTRACT
Young people today grow up in a profoundly textual world. Encountering digitally mediated texts via computers, television, tablets, cell phones, and gaming devices, youth have more opportunities than ever before to engage with and make meaning across many forms and varieties of text. And it appears that young people are embracing these opportunities in record numbers, with 95% of young people ages 12–17 in the US using the Internet to search for information, create original content, or exchange messages with others (Lenhart, 2012). Many of these textual engagements are conducted across social media sites that connect people and media with one another, with at least 80% of online youth now participating on these sites (Lenhart et al., 2011). These socially oriented communicative environments are highly participatory and collaborative, offering amplified authoring opportunities for young people to produce and shape content online for and with others across a variety of modes.
