The App Generation: How Today's Youth Navigate Identity, Intimacy, and Imagination in a Digital World

Praise for The App Generation: How Today's Youth Navigate Identity, Intimacy, and Imagination in a Digital World

"An ambitious and admirable project. . . . Meticulously researched and thoughtful."—New York Times Book Review

"[The App Generation] possesses an interesting insight. 'Young people growing up in our time are not only immersed in apps, . . . they’ve come to think of the world as an ensemble of apps, to see their lives as a string of ordered apps, or perhaps, in many cases, a single, extended, cradle-to-grave app.'"—Dwight Garner, New York Times

"Many of the observations . . . are illuminated with careful thought and research [and] offer a readable and intelligent summary of where we are today."—Josh Glancy, The Sunday Times

"Gardner is a renowned psychologist who has long decried box-ticking behaviourist approaches to education . . . he and Davis . . . build a strong case that a dependency on apps is having a reductive effect on young people."—Gautam Malkani, The Financial Times

"Provocative . . . Provides useful frameworks for future research."—Publishers Weekly

"Elevates the discussion beyond knee-jerk complaints about 'those #@#!! kids who are on their phones all day.'"—Mindful Magazine

"Gardner and Davis have offered a challenging and thought-provoking book: particularly rewarding for educators who are interested in thinking about how young people are changing, and how we might preserve the best practices of our profession while adapting the tools that define a generation."—Education Week's EdTech Researcher

"This compelling book explores what it's like to be 'app-dependent' and what life was like before the power of apps on our society. Howard Gardner, the renowned father of the multiple intelligence theory, along with co-writer Kate Davis, offers readers an in-depth look at the benefits and drawbacks of apps, and how the power of these apps can lead to greater creativity."—Top Books for Educators, About.com

"A thoughtful overview of how digital media and applications have contributed to a pervasive app mentality among youth. . . . The combination of conversational style and scholarly annotations makes the book rewarding for a broad audience, including parents and educators. . . . Highly recommended. All Readers."—Choice

"Here we have a serious consideration that a generation has grown up with an emotional aesthetic as instrumental as their technology. That is, this generation approaches intimacy, identity, and imagination through the prism of the apps that have surrounded them. Gardner and Davis further consider the proposition that 'What can’t be an app doesn’t matter.' But the authors do more than this. They approach their subject in a constructive spirit, providing analytical tools to distinguish among apps, the ones that will stifle and the ones that will nurture. In the end, they see a way forward: We are responsible, individually and in our communities and families to use technology in ways that open up the world rather that close it down. The App Generation is not anti-technology; it simply puts technology in its place."—Sherry Turkle, author of Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other

"The App Generation deals with a crucial issue for our future, and it is a pioneering and prophetic work in its genre."—Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, author of Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience

"This book is must reading for parents, teachers and policy makers. It presents a portrait of today’s young people, not in terms of the traditional historical events of their lives, but instead the digital technology that shaped this generation. It compellingly and powerfully examines the impact, consequences, and implications for their and society’s future."—Arthur Levine, President of the Woodrow Wilson Foundation & former President of Teachers College, Columbia University

"Howard Gardner is one of America’s most celebrated developmental psychologists and public intellectuals. His latest work is always worth reading."—Robert Putnam, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University

"Conversations across four digital 'generations' start and end the book. They provide intriguing examples of novel practices and performances in the areas of identity, intimacy, and imagination, as well as what it means to be a true 'digital native.' Gardner carries his groundbreaking work on visual creativity into the digital age, showing the increasing complexity and innovation in teen artwork between 1990 and 2011. At the same time, Gardner & Davis demonstrate a parallel decline into conventionality and informality of literary expression in the visual environment of the digital age."—Patricia M. Greenfield, Distinguished Professor of Psychology, UCLA and Director, Children’s Digital Media Center @ Los Angeles