"And a vast number of contemporary novels have been turned into historical novels by the invention of the cell phone. The whole basis of the The Babysitter's Club was that parents would be thrilled to make one phone call and reach six possible babysitters — and that one of the main characters had her own phone. With the ability to send out six emails or texts instantaneously, hundreds of books were relegated to the dustbin of history. Catcher in the Rye and Lord of the Flies are contemporary novels that could no longer happen in the actual contemporary world. As more and more books become historical, there is less demand for historical novels that predate the 1980s.
Dystopian fiction, on the other hand, faces none of these complications. Readers don't have to be told why there aren't cell phones in The Hunger Games or why no one has Facebook in Uglies — or even worse, why someone has MySpace instead of facebook. Even in worlds where social media is part of the dystopian problem, like Feed or Scored, there's no reason for that technology to have anything to do with the technology teens know and use.
Dystopian fiction gets to keep all the things teens love about historical fiction: larger-than-life struggles in flawed societies, vicarious teenage freedom and responsibility, and detailed world-building. But it avoids the technological irrelevancy of contemporary YA fiction that has created a glut of historical fiction. It also avoids the pitfalls of expecting teenagers to share cultural knowledge that may have become irrelevant in the modern world. And by considering the deeper meaning of technology it can have more to do with contemporary teens' lives than contemporary fiction that goes out of its way to avoid recent technology."