Choice and Rules in The Giver and Growing Up Digital
In today’s world most kids would pick watching a YouTube video about the book rather than reading the book itself. People in power should sometimes have power over people, In The Giver and in Growing Up Digital, choice and rules/restrictions play a role on what they are able to do. People need to know to choose between a good choice rather than a bad choice. For example, In “The Giver” by Lois Lowry people are limited on choices. The citizens of the community cannot choose theirjobs or spouses, but the government watch over the citizens to give a job and spouse that are similar to them. There are pros and cons with the government being able to make choices for the citizens. For pros the government keeps the community extremely safe, but the con is they have a schedule they must follow everyday which leaves them with very little free time. Also, in The Giver rules and restrictions also are limited.
Like for example if regular citizens go out late at night without permission they would be released. Also,ru|es like eating pills every morning that remove a person’s feelings is bad because the citizens don’t even know that the pills take away feelings. Another is like the kids getting their bikes only at 9 years old and the kids can’t get it before or after age 9. Also, in the community people are limited to what they can eat if a citizen decided to take an apple and save it to eat some time else he would get a warning. Others are good like not letting citizens run to another community due to the citizens not having any survival skills to get there.
In the community people should have some choices like jobs and spouses, but if there are people killing each other the government will punish them for making a bad choice. Also, in “Growing Up Digital” by Matt Richtel there were examples of choice. For example, right in the beginning of the article, Vishal Singh, a senior year in high school, had to decide whether to use YouTube or read a book to get the information needed for the first day of school. Vishal says that he would rather get the whole story on YouTube in six minutes rather than reading the book itself.
Vishal could choose to get the main idea of the story in a few minutes by watching a YouTube video or he could read the book which would take longer,but the downside to watching the video is he wouldn’t know specific events in the story. Also, in “Growing Up Digital” by Matt Richtel there are, also, examples of rules and restrictions. For example, students say that their parents, worried about the distractions caused by technology, try to restrict their time on the computer and video games because the distractions cause them not to do their homework. However, with cellphones it’s different because a lot of parents want to call their kids at any time. The kids need to decide when it’s a good time or bad time to play on the computer and play video games. So, people should be able to make choices, but know between a good choice and a bad choice.
