About the Young Writers Project
YWP, an independent nonprofit based in Burlington, Vermont, engages young people to write and use digital media to express themselves with clarity and power and to gain confidence and skills for the workplace and life. YWP publishes about 1,000 students’ work each year here, in newspapers across Vermont, on Vermont Public Radio and in YWP’s monthly digital magazine, The Voice. Since 2006, it has offered young people a place to write, explore and connect online at youngwritersproject.org, which has only one rule: Be respectful. For more information, please contact YWP executive director Geoffrey Gevalt at ggevalt@youngwritersproject.org.
Madeline Evans, a freshman at Burlington High School, describes what it’s like to be “wired in” to her phone, her laptop and social media, etc.
Wired
By Madeline Evans
[I] sit stagnant on a couch,
its color long forgotten beneath me,
surrounded by my friends:
a text on my phone,
a chat on my laptop,
a few tabs and apps of social media here and there.
YouTube plays songs into my headphones
that might as well be attached to me.
Friends I know from school,
friends I know from travels,
friends whose faces I have never seen.
My thick red headphone wire lies across my lap.
Phone and computer chargers tangle in my legs.
A book lies forgotten on the coffee table in front of my body,
but my mind is elsewhere.
Inside the computer,
sugar and bright pixels stimulate my brain.
I fight off virtual dragons and hop over fantasized snow.
As much as I hate to admit it,
I’m addicted.
I’m stuck.
I’m wired into the system.
I’m wired.
