Howard Gardner and Katie Davis: The App Generation: How Today’s Youth Navigate Identity, Intimacy, and Imagination in a Digital World

Excerpt

In The App Generation, Howard Gardner and Katie Davis confront the effects of youth’s immersion into a world full of digital technologies and, most importantly, apps. It quickly becomes evident that there have been many changes in the lives of young people due to the introduction of apps, but the question soon becomes this: are these changes good or bad? The authors examine whether a world focused so heavily on technology can be app-enabling with apps that allow for new possibilities, or app-dependent with apps that restrict our ability to perform, make choices, and set goals. Throughout the book, Gardner and Davis focus largely on three characteristics of people: their ability to form a sense of self, their interpersonal relationships, and their ability to exercise their imagination. They address each of these aspects, in addition to what exactly the words technology and generation mean, in separate chapters of their book. …