Rethinking ‘Virtual’ Youth: Young People and Life Writing

Abstract

Youth is widely thought of as ‘a time of experimentation with different styles of communicating and articulating identity’ (Stern, 2007: 2). However, traditionally, stories about young people’s lives, like young people’s literature and culture, have been ‘written by adults, illustrated by adults, edited by adults, marketed by adults, purchased by adults, and often read by adults’ ( Jenkins, 1998: 23). And within culture more broadly, as Giroux contends, experiences of youth are rarely narrated by the young. He writes:

Prohibited from speaking as moral and political agents, youth becomes an empty category inhabited by the desires, fantasies and interests of the adult world. This is not to suggest that youth don’t speak; they are simply restricted from speaking in those spheres where public conversation shapes social policy and refused the power to make knowledge consequential. (Giroux, 1998: 24)