The app generation: how today's youth navigate identity, intimacy, and imagination in a digital world

TLDR

The current generation, dubbed the App Generation by Gardner and Davis, is deeply immersed in digital media, shaping their identity, intimacy, and imagination in ways distinct from previous eras. The authors aim to move beyond apps’ intended uses, proposing that their power can launch greater creativity and higher aspirations. They conducted interviews with youth, focus groups with adults, and compared artistic works before and after the digital revolution to assess apps’ effects. Apps both constrain identity, foster superficial relationships, and stifle imagination, yet also strengthen identity, enable deep connections, and spark creativity.

Abstract

No one has failed to notice that the current generation of youth is deeplysome would say totallyinvolved with digital media. Professors Howard Gardner and Katie Davis name todays young people The App Generation, and in this spellbinding book they explore what it means to be app-dependent versus app-enabled and how life for this generation differs from life before the digital era.Gardner and Davis are concerned with three vital areas of adolescent life: identity, intimacy, and imagination. Through innovative research, including interviews of young people, focus groups of those who work with them, and a unique comparison ofyouthful artistic productions before and after the digital revolution, the authors uncover the drawbacks of apps: they may foreclose a sense of identity, encourage superficial relations with others, and stunt creative imagination. On the other hand, the benefits of apps are equally striking: they can promote a strong sense of identity, allow deep relationships, and stimulate creativity. The challenge is to venture beyond the ways that apps are designed to be used, Gardner and Davis conclude, and they suggest how the power of apps can be a springboard to greater creativity and higher aspirations.