To What Extent Is 1984 Still Relevant Today

Are we living in 1984 today? George Orwell’s 1984 is a dystopian novel with a very controlling government. 1984 continues to be relevant today in the censorship of reading material, the reach of social media, and the collection of people’s personal information.
The relevance of 1984 is clearly seen in the censorship of reading material in many schools’ reading systems today. Many schools especially down south are still banning books to this day. “Protecting people from ideas from which you disagree is a big thing in the culture wars these days and one of the more visible ways to do that is banning books”. This quote shows that people don't think that we should be able to have our own ideas on the things that we choose to read. So what's the

People today are greatly influenced by the platform TikTok. One person makes a dance and posts it online and suddenly everyone is doing it. For example, the Griddy one person did it and now you see famous people doing it, football players, and just random kids going down the hallway. This is seen in The LEGO Movie when the commercial constantly says “Where are my pants?” After the people in the movie watch the commercial they go around and constantly say the same thing over and over again after. “The horrible thing about the Two Minutes Hate was not that one was obligated to act a part, but that it was impossible to avoid joining in”(Orwell 14). This is also shown in the book 1984 during the two minutes hate except that here they don’t have a choice but to participate. Doing TikTok dances is very similar to the commercial from the movie because we are all so easily influenced whether we are doing it mindlessly or

When you google something and click on a website it will want you to accept the cookies. Lots of us just hit accept mindlessly but what this is doing is saving your information. They could just be small little things but who actually knows what they are collecting and who knows what those small things could add up to? This is seen in the article “Musk Rightly Pushes Freedom of Speech” where he says “Technologies now provide unprecedented power to gather personal information about individuals.” When we use our phones every little thing that we do on them collects little pieces of information about us. We may think that the information being collected is unimportant but what if we don’t know the full extent of what’s being collected? “How often, or on what system, the Thought police plugged in on any individual wire was guess work. It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. But at any rate that could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to. You had to live— did live, from habit that became instinct— in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized”(Orwell 3). This is also seen in the book 1984 when the government is trying to get into everyone’s heads and control every little thought they have. This is why I think that we should all be more careful with what information