Texting Toward Utopia: Kids, Writing, and Resistance

Parents complain that kids today don’t do their homework because they are distracted by the Internet, texting, and video games. Many kids experience schooling as nothing more than endless homework, distracted teachers, and helicopter parents. It is easy to conclude from these factors that young people lack cultural literacy.

By presenting the writings of today’s kids, however, Agger develops an alternative perspective: This is the most literary of times, and the young people of today write furiously, albeit often below the adult radar.

Here, where texting replaces textbooks, the writing may be emoticon-laden, slangy, or terse, but there is something profound going on, as kids (and their parents, too) engage in resistance and write toward utopia—a better world. Much texting and tweeting occur at night, when kids form egalitarian online and offline relationships and operate in a world in which a person can have many friends and explore opportunities previously unavailable to them. This book is a guide to understanding a new generation and its ideals, including democracy.