By Ilana Olin

Don’t get lost in the chaos.

 In the hustle and bustle of modern day society, many individuals with their unique stories and perspectives are lost in the midst of chaos. I never fully grasped this importance to not get lost in the chaos for teenagers. Teens are on a quest of exploration and self-identification, this I have read in textbooks and articles, but viewing it firsthand has heightened my awareness of this need to be recognized as worthy, as significant, as an individual.

 This realization occurred as a result of my short time interning at VOX. I am in my second semester of graduate school in which I am pursuing a master’s in social work and a master’s in public health at The University of Georgia. In the beginning of this semester, I was placed at VOX Teen Communications for my field placement—a required direct service portion ...

Admiringly, I gazed again at the witty, artfully constructed paragraph in the film review submitted by Whitney, one of our most dedicated VOX teen staffers. I was so impressed that I read it aloud to the adult staff. This is a common practice here when the editors want to share examples of great writing or run a potential red flag past a colleague. In this case, I inadvertently accomplished both. With the polished prose still hanging in air, I removed my rose-tinted rookie social worker reading glasses, strapped on my weathered 20-year-old reporter’s goggles and finally detected the problem. It was too artfully constructed. Whitney normally endures an average of five tough edits by me as she crafts drafts of her stories for publication.

 This was a first draft.

 With a pit the size of the Grand Canyon growing in my gut, I cut-and-pasted the paragraph into a search engine. ...

I squinted hard at the computer screen over the teen’s shoulder to make sure I had read his Twitter account name correctly. My jaw hit the floor as I attempted to connect the string of obscenities he used to describe himself in his gangsta rap-inspired Twitter persona with the polite, soft-spoken, Bible-quoting kid I have gotten to know in our newsroom. At VOX, this sensitive 16-year-old exhibits a passion for taking photographs, fashion and singing. His tweets, meanwhile, read like the rantings of drug kingpin who could cop to offing Tupac Shakur and Biggie Smalls at any second.

 Welcome to the inaugural “Your Digital Imprint” VOX teen workshop.

 In my first few months here as associate editor, I noted that today’s teens are the first generation to live their lives online 24/7 in real time. Their lives are a constantly changing swirl of Facebook status updates, tear-stained Tumblr blogs about ...