Following Social Change

Teenagers have got to be the most challenging group to teach writing. They have just enough knowledge at their fingertips that they feel they know it all, and now they have all the technology they need to back their play. Lindemann claims that "language change follows social change, not the other way around" (66).  So this is basically empowering those little idiots to use text speak and tweets and regurgitate them in the classroom. (Are they the idiots or am I for not embracing them?--Little column A, little column B.) 

I am all for incorporating modern technology and intelligent new media into the classroom, but how do you tell a 15 year old that she is misusing/abusing lol and rofl and brb in her academics. I don't want to teach another generation of kids how to write academically they way I was taught, to write "up," but I also don't want to hire another assistant that uses the @ and & signs in formal letters to my clients. I also don't want another lazy or entitled kid showing up late, working four hours and claiming they are overworked and underpaid...and I am not that old. I am not 50 and crotchity. I am still in my 20s and already feeling like I am in the last generation of well spoken, hard-working, literate people...but maybe every generation has felt that way.

So how do you, teachers in my class, how do you teach a teenager that cares more about her number of twitter followers than her own education or literacy. Where's the balance?

Not talking about idioms or regional dialect here. In general, what do you do with tech savvy, socially literate illiterates?