The App Generation Read Free

hands or in our vehicles a device that informs us of our precise position in space, directs us from that position to our desired location, and, if for any reason we deviate from the preferred route, adjusts its directions accordingly. For all practical purposes, such GPS systemsare apps that remove uncertainty from our journey. Indeed, you might decide to use your smartphone as a navigation system by calling up Google Maps. Such apps not only give us extremely detailed maps of locations; drawing on our known and inferred preferences and the reviews of other users, they inform us about options every step of the way, such as nearby restaurants, cafés, or points of interest. We can say that these apps allow error-free navigation even as they seek to satisfy all of our possible needs and desires en route.
    With respect to a life with foolproof navigational aids, after Howard delivered a talk on education to a college audience, a bright and somewhat aggressive student brandishing his smartphone approached Howard. Flashing a grin, he said, “In the future, why will we need school? After all, the answers to all questions are—or soon will be—contained in this smartphone.” Howard reflected for a moment and then responded, “Yes, the answers to all questions . . . except the important ones.” A world permeated by apps can in many ways be a wondrous one; and yet, we must ask whether all of life is—or should be—simply a collection of apps or one great, overarching super-app.
    Apps are great if they take care of ordinary stuff and thereby free us to explore new paths, form deeper relationships, ponder the biggest mysteries of life, forge a unique and meaningful identity. But if apps merely turn us into more skilled couch potatoes who do not think for ourselves, or pose new questions, or develop significant relationships, or fashion an appropriate, rounded, and continually evolving sense of self,then the apps simply line the road to serfdom, psychologically speaking. One can get from Harvard Square to the North End with one’s eyes wide open or one’s eyes shut tight. In what follows, we attempt to capture this contrast neologistically: apps that allow or encourage us to pursue new possibilities are
app-enabling.
In contrast, when we allow apps to restrict or determine our procedures, choices, and goals, we become
app-dependent.
    In informal terms, we’ve introduced the problematic of this book and hinted at the answers we detail in the pages that follow. But we are hardly the first to have attempted a description of the current generation of young persons, nor are we alone in seeking to link the profile of today’s youth to the influence of digital media. Indeed, hardly a day goes by without some pundit singing the praises or lamenting the costs of a life dominated by digital devices. And hardly a fortnight goes by without a major essay or book on the topic. Before plunging into the details of our study, we owe the reader an explanation of what is special about our endeavor and the book it has spawned.
    Although some of the current thinking and writing about digital youth is notable, the ratio of claims made to data gathered and analyzed systematically is embarrassingly, indeed unacceptably, high. We have attempted to redress this imbalance. Over the past five years, our research team at Harvard has carried out a number of convergent studies on the nature of today’s youth. Using a variety of methods, we have sought tounderstand to what extent, and in which ways, the youth of today may differ from their predecessors.
    To begin with, we’ve observed young people, talked with them, eavesdropped (with permission!) on conversations dedicated to bland topics like “today’s youth” or stimulated by more provocative conversation-openers like “What do we owe to our parents and for what should we blame them?” Some of these conversations have been recorded, others