I Needed Someone to Hear My Prayers

"Because teenage girls don't pray to God, they pray to each other. They clasp their hands over a keyboard and then they let it all out, a (stupid) girl's heart tucked into another girl's heart . . . I needed someone to hear my prayers and did Penny ever make sure of that when she forwarded my fucking email to everyone in school, (49).

Poor Romy. The email she wrote to who she thought was her best friend, Penny, was passed through the modems and routers of her high school classmates and even into the world of adults, as Sheriff Turner confronts her with a copy at the beginning of All the Rage. Her innermost desires are revealed to the world entire, when she meant them only for herself and another person.

This is perhaps the most commanding message of the novel:  how technology can create false connection and the power it can wield over impressionable youth. One lonely email; one compromising photo; one recorded phone call and your misstep is broadcast to a hungry group waiting to devour and gossip. Romy is clamoring for affection while her classmates call for blood.

I came away from this novel grateful that this technology did not exist when I was young and vulnerable in high school. It seems to add another complicated layer to what is already a complicated and confusing experience. High school is miserable enough without the added pressure of having your mistakes made public.

I also took from this novel how important it is to have a conversation with youth I serve at my public library; about Internet safety and about privacy. I don't think children are taught how to use the technology they're given. We take it for granted that a generation of young people are walking around with devices that can be a ticking time bomb in the wrong hands. Access to information, so readily available and at hand, is a powerful and dangerous tool that we all should take care of and be aware of.