How Feed Portrays Teenagers and Their Decision-Making

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Feed was my favorite book we have read so far. I'm really starting to think that M.T. Anderson has a time machine because of his spot-on portrayal of technology from this novel, written in 2002 before the internet and social media began to take off. I was really impressed with how he presented the characters and themes in this novel, and it was a book that I could not put down once I started reading. One problem was obviously the word choice in this novel. It made it challenging to read through quickly, but the language served a specific purpose. I think Anderson used it to show how impressionable teenagers can be when they think something is "cool". For example, Violet uses "salad" as a replacement for happy on page 60 when she says "Maybe these are our salad days." Later on page 68, Titus says "the salad days couldn't last forever." Anderson uses this to show how language can catch on and take different forms based on its perception.

Sticking with the theme of teenagers being impressionable, Anderson shows how pop culture can have an effect on adolescents. Lesions are something that usually have a negative connotation, but when the starts of Oh Wow Thing get them it becomes the "cool" thing. When Calista gets them, Quendy is dismissive of how stupid it looks but then shows up to the party with lots of them. The internet/feed controls the way the youngsters in this novel think and act. When something is advertised, it's made to look "cool" so that the characters feel they have to have it. When Titus goes to buy an upcar, he buys the Dodge after seeing an advertisement with people in bikinis and a party scene. He is directly influenced by the advertisement in that situation. The hairstyles constantly change, and we see that the characters are lost in this world of trying to keep up. On page 279, Titus explains "It was like I kept buying these things to be cool, but cool was always flying just ahead of me, and I could never exactly catch up to it."

I feel that is a good correlation to what we are seeing in today's society. People see things on social media and feel they have to look/act like that to fit in. The internet, and social media in particular, creates a certain image and teenagers feel like they have to live up to that standard. This is particularly impactful on teenage girls that feel they have to conform to standards of beauty. Personally, this book made me think twice about my social media habits and helped me become more conscious about how those platforms impact my thinking.

I really enjoyed this novel and would love to teach it in my classroom. I connect it to George Orwell's 1984 with the way it shows big government and manipulation, but I think this book would be more enjoyable for high school students to read.


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