Discuss Emma's decision to change her future.

In the novel, The Future of Us, by Jay Asher and Carolyn Mackler, Emma makes bad decisions in order to change her future.  In the suburb of Lakeforest, Emma receives a computer from her dad and her best friend Josh brings over an AOL disc he got in the mail so she can access e-mail.  When Emma logs onto AOL she sees a blue tab that reads, Facebook.  Emma has no idea what this is because it is 1996 and Facebook has not even been invented yet!  Naturally she clicks on it and her Facebook page appears fifteen years in the future.  Next she discovers that multiple friends and family of hers have Facebook pages too, including Josh.  As Josh and Emma continue to pry through Facebook they are able to view their lives fifteen years in the future including details such as their jobs, who they marry, and where they went to college.  Knowledge of the future comes at a cost as Emma and Josh struggle to not use what they know about their futures in their everyday lives.  Emma cannot resist the urge to change her future.  Emma learns that her husband is gone for long periods of time and does not have a stable job.  Emma panics about her dreadful future and plots to do something drastic to avoid it.  She decides to call her future husband Jordan Jones Junior to guarantee they will never meet.  "Just like that, the future is changed forever.  Fifteen years of history-future history-is changed because Emma didn't like the guy she married...any person who was impacted by their relationship, even in the slightest way, will be twisted in countless new directions"(132).  Emma made a permanent change in her future even though she did not know that much about it.  She jumped to conclusions and immediately thought her life was awful from a few notes her future self posted on Facebook.  Emma continues to be disappointed with her future and adjusts her life in the future every time she is unhappy.  She never gives any new version of her life a chance to show how it really is.  Emma ends up regretting the choice she made to change her future life. She realizes that instead of worrying about her life fifteen years from now, she should have focused on the decisions she is making now so she can have a good future.  Adjusting the future was a poor decision by Emma and the risks she took resulted in serious consequences.

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