The exchange between society and technology today is very much different to what it used to be a few decades ago. The advancements that are being introduced today have led to many changes within society and lifestyles. Years back technology was considered a luxury, now it is a commodity. People need technology to get through the day. Cell phones are much more then a communication tool, people use it to get directions, keep their days organized, and use it for occupational reasons. People have their whole worlds in their mobile phones. Feed is set in this world about two hundred years from now and almost all the characters, at most the teenagers in this story, have had a chip installed in their brains at the time of their birth. This chip enables them to both surf the internet and chat with people with out doing it orally. This feed syncs itself into the persons personality and advertises the latest in fashion, gossip, and culture. But the characters in this story do not know about the implications that the feed is having away at their bodies. It is slowly eating them away to the point that they have lesions covering their bodies and their skin slowly deteriorates to the point where the protagonists mother had her teeth exposed even when her mouth was closed. But their dependence on the feed since birth enabled the feed to make them accept what was happening to them as well as control every aspect in their life, as well as every decision. It was able to tell a person, through their personality and previous actions, what sort of product they should buy and it would also be able to tell them what they were feeling and use that to push a product that they guaranteed would help them. Since the Feed controls parts of the brain, the protagonist love interest, Violet, had died because her feed had flawed the functions of her brain taking away motor abilities and her memories. It is with time and the advancements of technology that people will allow for the technology to control their bodies.

In an article published by USA today, it was said by psychologist that technology today had placed the youth in a “bubble” in which their morals and communication skills are different to that of adults. The article argued that the social lives of the youth is revolving more and more around technology because they grew up with the internet, iPods, and social networking sites. Studies have shown that the morals and social norms that kids find acceptable have changed from the 1950’s to now. The technology is changing the lifestyles of people and since today’s youth were exposed to it at a much younger age then current adults their resistant and hesitation to such technologies would not be as great. The same can be seen in Feed because the Feed was placed into their heads at birth and they were never shown a world without it. Their whole existence and personality has been molded by the feed and with out it they would have nothing. Violet was the only teenage character who did not have the feed since birth and because of that she had a different view on the world and her bluntness about the ridiculous and controlling aspects of the Feed is seen in her. Her voice and position in the book can be seen as the voice of reason because she was the only one who questioned the Feed as well as knew how it worked to get people to buy certain products. She questioned the holes in answers to questions about the world around them. The teens in the novel were so consumed by products and what was considered “in” that they completely ignored the world around them and the disappearance of towns and starving people in the world. “When you have the feed all your life, you’re brought up to think about things. Like them never telling you that it’s a republic and not a democracy. It something that makes me angry, what people don’t know about today…” (113). M.T. Anderson was trying to portray in his dystopian novel the ignorance of certain global issues that people are being blinded from today. Advertisements and commercialism changes the way people talk and look and people do not notice it happening. People know the harm of using certain products like cigarettes and drugs but they continue using it because movies and advertisements give it an image of being sophisticated and cool. People know the harm of dumping waste and burning fossil fuels but they continue doing it because of the world’s need for products and automobiles.

The exchange that people have with technology is blinding them from the real world and issues that people used to consider important like the environment. Technology is creating a new culture that disregards any consequences to their actions. With the incoming wave of bigger and better technology society is shying away from the humanistic ideals and morals of the older generations. Violet’s father does not have the feed in his brain so he sees how destructed and corrupted the world had become. He saw the transformation from a world with the feed to one with out it and has had his family die and suffers from it. By allegorically showing the affects of the technology in the future Anderson was able scrutinize the behavior of modern society as being shallow, extravagant, and ignorant. In this article M.T Anderson says that he wrote this novel for teenagers and simplified many of the issues that America is dealing with today because since they are the future of this country they could do something about it.