A slender, chatty blonde who wears black-framed plastic glasses, Nadia checks her e-mail and peruses myyearbook.com, a social networking site, reading messages or posting updates on her mood. She searches for music videos on YouTube and logs onto Gaia Online, a role-playing site where members fashion alternate identities as cutesy cartoon characters. But she spends most of her time on quizilla.com or fanfiction.net, reading and commenting on stories written by other users and based on books, television shows or movies.

Alexa Battey, a student teacher at Southern Alamance High School, looks around the room at her 20 College Prep English seniors. Most of them look bored reading Macbeth which some have even referred to as "MacBoring." Far from the Internet surfing these teens are used to, Macbeth requires interpretation, not just the surface reading these teens have become accustomed to. "The novels seem to be over their heads," Battey said. "They're not used to that type of writing…They're used to things being very basic. Things on the Internet today are easy-reads, just stating the facts and basic details. They're smart, but they're used to things being put in front of them and not having to dig deep."