Smith Teens

Anyone who thinks today's teens can't write is in for a pleasant surprise at Smith Teens, a storytelling site that tasks kids with the seemingly impossible: summarize your life in six words. Kids rise to the occasion with gems like "I never take my own advice," one of more than 50,000 entries currently posted. As easy to use as it is addictive, Smith Teens lets kids enter as many "memoirs" as they like along with a profile photo and comment on each other's work. According to creator Larry Smith some members use Smith Teens as a daily journal. We do have a couple of technical beefs: it's hard to find stuff on the site -- the only search tool is a word cloud -- and the pages aren't numbered. The latter means you can't tell how many more entries there are to read before you're done with, say, all the submissions on "love". But these navigation problems are easy to overlook in an otherwise terrific site for aspiring young writers.

Online interaction: Comments left after submissions are the only means of communication teens have on the site. Like the submissions themselves, comments are largely unregulated. However, teens are mostly supportive of each other’s creative efforts, and when kids use submissions to express suicidal or other depressed thoughts their peers try to comfort them.