Review: Growing Up Wired by David Wallace Fleming

I was fortunate enough to receive this book from the author through the group, Making Connections on Goodreads.


How will romantic relationships withstand technology's offer of instant gratification?

While on his computer, Victor Hastings admires the provocative pictures of the girl he's dating.

Meanwhile, she's posting more and more on Facebook and all the social sites.

Now everyone in his cramped fraternity is competing for her.

What kind of love is this?

The wired kind.

Growing Up Wired - technology's dirty secrets - questioned and challenged.

Author Recommendation - Mature Young Adults(language, drinking & drug-use, sexual situations)





Review
Genre: Contemporary Fiction, Literary Fiction
Rating: 5 out of 5 Stars

Growing Up Wired is almost like a college experience all rolled into one book. Drugs, drinking, sex, porn and a generation obsessed with technology. David Fleming sneaks in these sub-plots that are meaningful and just simply brilliant. It's almost scary how realistic this book is. Growing Up Wired shows how individuals(maybe a certain generation) can become disconnected with the living world by shutting themselves away or being dependent with technology(computers, cell phones, social websites etc).

I think that with Growing Up Wired, each reader will come away with a different meaning, maybe along the same lines, but still different. For me, this was a story about a college guy, Victor Hastings, who is stuck in a technological, virtual haze trying to escape by any means possible. Maybe sex for him is the first step in being able to feel, but he keeps getting reeled into the psychological games of shy or ill-reputed females. He perceives himself as unconfident, but even so he is always disallowing people to label him. By being the observer we are allowed to see that he perceives himself wrong(in my opinion). He is more than fairly intelligent and is confident just not in face-to-face female interactions. Victor(and some others) are inclined to many philosophical ramblings, but I found this to be insightful, sometimes confusing, but still making perfect sense(Am I making sense?). College is the time for self-discovery and this is what the book portrayed for me, whether or not that was the authors intentions. There is also the point of women(or college aged females) who allow themselves to be subjectified, either willingly or because of a deeper reason. Everybody craves attention from everyone, parents, peers, authority figures, etc, but how far are you willing to go to get that attention?

We get an array of different characters(as is prone in life) that are all scary realistic. You have the resident stoner, the overage frat boy that refuses to grow up, the guy that starts to lose it, the confident guy that gets what he sets his mind to(maybe the sanest character; I hope the author knows who I'm talking about), and all the inbetweens.

"With all the distractions and breakneck pace of everything today, there's no way to know what's real anymore"

I was completely and utterly entranced by Growing Up Wired. I devoured it as quickly as possible, unable to put it down. This should be a REQUIRED read for all college students and recent college grads. It makes you put a lot of things into perspective. Probably not the best book for college parents, but then again, it might bring them to a new level of understanding(or just scare the crap out of them).

Growing Up Wired is available at Amazon