The Newest Disease

There’s a huge epidemic that has been spreading around the world. This disease starts when you are about 11 or 12 and does not go away. It actually gets worse as the years go on if you decide not to acknowledge it. It starts to consume your whole life to the point where you start to lose social skills because you are just stuck in the house all of the time.

You didn’t choose to have this disease and you didn’t choose for it to get worse and worse as the years go on.

It all just kind of happened.

What is this disease you might ask?

Technology.

There has been a lot of talk about how technology is so much more hurtful than helpful, which is why I decided to use the example of a disease to explain it. Some people might even think that these advances in technology are extremely positive, which they are in some cases.

We can now talk to people instantly. I do think that texting has some benefits because you can keep in contact with people you may not have kept in contact with if texting didn’t exist. Video chat helps a lot when it comes to keeping in contact with family in other states or over seas.

Technology has gotten to the point where it is beginning to take part of our whole world. It is already deemed a necessity these days, and like Violet’s dad, if you don’t have it, then you’re looked at differently. In Feed, technology is the only way that these kids can exist. Having the feed is essential to their life. If the feed malfunctions, then their whole life can be at risk since it is connected to the brain. It controls their entire body.

Although we are not as advanced in technology as they are in the world of Feed, we still suffer the same social downfalls. A lot of younger kids have trouble talking to people. They are lacking this social skill because their main form of communication is through texting. Also, the fact that kids are spending a majority of their day using technology doesn’t help.

The characters in Feed use something called m-chat to talk to each other. There’s a scene in Feed where Titus and Violet are in Titus’ upcar and he is m-chatting Violet instead of talking to her. She has to tell him to “talk in the air” or something along those lines. The feed has affected everyone that has it so much that they barely talk out loud anymore.

Since the feed is hooked up to your brain, it knows what you're thinking. When you're trying to think of a word, it'll suggest words that would be good to use. It's kind of the the feature that currently on the iPhone. On the iPhone, instead of giving you the actual word you're thinking of, it will give you what it thinks you want to say.

Titus tries to describe how the feed is a good thing in many ways throughout the book. He tells us about how because of the feed, he can find out “which battles of the Civil War George Washington fought in” (Anderson 47).

You read that right. “Which battles of the Civil War that George Washington fought in.” Hopefully you know that George Washington didn’t fight in the Civil War.

He wasn’t even alive then…

Titus just thinks that you can be “supersmart” just by having the feed, but as you can tell, the feed isn’t always correct. He trusts in the feed too much.

We use technology as the only source to get information too often. I honestly don't even know of anyone that uses books to get information anymore. The people that do use books to get information look them up online. They don't go to the library and open a book unless they absolutely have. I'm even part of this and I know that it is wrong and getting out of hand. I'm not trying to say that all information on the internet is probably false, because it isn't, but you need to know how to distinguish something that is legit from something that is completely false.

The only cure that you're going to find for this "disease" is to find at least 15 minutes to get away from technology for a little while. Play an instrument, draw or paint something, go for a walk or a run without any music for a change. There's so much you can do to just get away from technology. I know that it will be hard because we're all so addicted, but it's possible and it's only going to help us in the future.

-Emily C. Prompt 4

Anderson, M.T. Feed. Cambridge, MA: Candlewick, 2002. Print.