Download the Yale University Press press release, and the University of Washington press release.
Are Apps a Trap? An Interview with Howard Gardner and Katie Davis on Henry Jenkins’ Confessions of an Aca-Fan: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 (10/10-15/2014)
Microsoft’s Cyber Trust Blog interviews Katie Davis on The App Generation. (9/11/2014)
Ideas.TED.com discusses The App Generation with Howard Gardner and Katie Davis in “There’s No App for Good Teaching: 8 ways to think about tech in ways that actually improve the classroom,” (9/3/14)
Howard Gardner explains “How Apps Can Cause Us to Take Fewer Risks in the Game of Life” on The World Post blog, a partnership of The Huffington Post and Berggruen Institute on Governance (4/28/2014)
Authors Howard Gardner and Katie Davis discuss “How Technology Is Changing Us” on Cognoscenti (2/12/2014)
“This generation expects that every aspect of life will be quick, efficient, streamlined, available immediately on demand, tell you what to do, how to do it, how others feel about it, and, at least implicitly, how you should feel about it, how you should feel about yourselves.”
Read more from the authors in their op-ed in The Seattle Times, “Are Apps Becoming a Human Crutch?” (1/7/2014)
The authors respond to questions from the Huffington Post: Education:
“There is no reason to assume that digital fame precludes creativity and a strong sense of identity – Justin Bieber and Beyoncé may have both. We argue that the ‘branding’ modeled by apps encourages slick and superficial identities, rather than ones that are forged gradually through a variety of experiences in a variety of settings over time.”—Howard Gardner/Katie Davis
“Fascinating and provocative”—Karmeta Hendrickson and Lee-Ann Liles, Bermuda College Journal (8/2016)
“The digital generation has never had to wait to get an answer to a question, let alone fiddle with rabbit ears to get reception on a TV set. These kids are what “the psychologists Howard Gardner and Katie Davis called the ‘app generation.’”—Cecilia M. Ford, Women’s Voices for Change (12/10/2015)
“The authors’ verdict is mixed . . . It’s the difference between utilizing apps to enhance your experience of life, providing more and better options and ways of achieving objectives – or, on the other hand, having your life governed by the apps, so you become a virtual clone of all your fellow app slaves.”—Frank Robinson, Times Union blog: On Life, Society, Politics, and Philosophy (12/9/2015)
“Today’s youth, according to Davis and Gardner, are not just immersed in apps, but they view their lives as a string of ordered apps .”—Frank DiMaria, T.H.E. Journal (6/16/15)
“Leave it to Howard Gardner and Katie Davis to analyze actual evidence, distill the research, and synthesize it all into a readable, insightful and important package.”—Merri Rosenberg, Education Update Online (3/2015)
“The App Generation explores adolescent life in the digital era . . . the most surprising finding from his research was that young people today are more risk averse.”—Kate Whitehead, South China Morning Post (12/2/2014)
Read the Italian reviews of The App Generation in Pagina99 (10/11/2014), Il Sole 24 Ore (11/9/2014), Contro Campus (11/11/2014), and La Stampa (12/13/2014).
“The App Generation, by Howard Gardner and Katie Davis, says the technology has had its greatest impact on young people’s identity, on their ability to have intimate relations, and on their imaginations.”—Emer Sexton, Irish Examiner (10/16/2014)
“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 (6/2014)
Read Maria Konnikova’s New Yorker blog post on Internet psychology. (5/1/2014)
“Like all manmade inventions, from the humble kitchen knife to the motor car, tools and technology have always had both beneficial and baneful effects, depending on how the user engages with them . . . educator Howard Gardner and his doctoral student Katie Davis draw a distinction between “app-enabling” and “app-dependent” digital tools.”—Aruna Sankaranarayanan, Live Mint (4/28/2014)
“The App Generation looks at how today’s young people differ from kids from pre-digital times in these areas of identity, intimacy and imagination.”—Don Burgess, BDA Sun (4/23/2014)
“a synthesis of several research projects . . . the book explores the app mentality through identity, intimacy and imagination.”—Don Burgess, BDA Sun (3/21/2014)
“[Gardner and Davis] build a strong case that a dependency on apps is having a reductive effect on young people.”—Gautam Malkani, The Financial Times (2/28/14)
“A first rate study . . . . In The App Generation, Gardner and Davis assert that the changes (new technologies, social upheaval) are coming so fast that the standard twenty-year span that characterizes a “generation” may be reduced to a mere five years. . .”—Robert S. Fogarty, The Antioch Review (Spring 2014)
Peter Lewis selects this “necessary book” as Book of the Week in the Daily Mail (2/14/14)
A “readable and intelligent summary of where we are today”—Josh Glancey, The Sunday Times (1/26/14)
“Gardner and Davis see both the upside and the risks inherent in the massive social and educational changes new technologies have bestowed.”—Megan Lisa Jones, LAERNN.org (12/28/13)
“The App Generation is a well-reasoned study of today’s young adepts of the internet, facebook, instagram, and countless iphone apps.”—Colloquy, The GSAS Alumni Magazine (Fall 2013)
“We should pause over Gardner and Davis’ underlying concern, about the implications of constantly channeling kids in a predetermined direction.This isn’t just about reliance on technology—it’s also a byproduct of the enormous anxiety parents feel about screwing up. The well-beaten path is easier to justify than the road to who knows where. “—Emily Bazelon, Slate (12/3/13)
2013 Recommended Reading For Creative Leaders by Forbes (11/27/13)
“The book calls on us to ask questions about when our technologies, and therefore our ways of thinking, enable us and when they make us dependent. Do we have apps? Or, do apps have us?”—Jordan Shapiro, Forbes (11/13/13)
“The studies conducted by Gardner and Davis (such as one involving high school students’ creative writing and artwork over the past 20 years) and those they cite (like how often people use racist and sexist language online) are fascinating.”—Sarah Rothbard, Slate (11/13/13)
“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.”—Justin Reich, Education Week (11/3/13)
“The App Generation . . . puts forward a new framework for thinking about young people’s changing experience of intimacy, identity, and creativity. The change that cuts across all those areas is a heightened “risk aversion” among modern kids, who . . . tend to ‘see their whole life as a series of apps.'”—Marc Parry, The Chronicle of Higher Education (10/28/13)
“Although ultimately apps and digital media are not the enemy, Gardner reiterated that a world completely dependent on apps is not good. He encouraged everyone – especially young people — to not allow apps to become “dictators” of our lives. Gardner and Davis advised that it starts with adults getting off their phones and modeling moderation to children, and encouraging a time to put technology aside.”—Jill Anderson, Askwith Forums, Harvard Graduate School of Education (10/25/13)
“Howard and Katie’s timely and thought-provoking book is not all doom and gloom . . . . They cite examples where apps can be enabling – that is, where they can be used to deepen or further our understanding or to facilitate creativity.”—Liz Dawes Duraisingh, Walk to Learn, Project Zero (10/20/13)
“With The App Generation, Davis and Gardner join a conversation that challenges our sense of technology as something external to us — mere tools or information — and recognizes that its relationship to us is its most critical feature.”—Monica Guzman, The Seattle Times (10/19/13)
“Apps are here to stay, the authors make clear, and the question now is how to make use of them in a productive, creative way. “—Katherine Xue, Harvard Magazine (11/2013)
“With hundreds of interviews with children, several focus groups and a comparison of drawings and stories produced by children before and after the ‘digital age,’ Davis and Gardner analyze how exactly the app environment has helped and hurt the way today’s children think.”—Taylor Soper, Geek Wire (9/27/13)
“The App Generation offers teachers an in-depth look of how digital technology has shaped today’s youth. Educators will learn how to encourage their students to be creative, and imaginative beyond the letter of the app.”—Janelle Cox, About.com (9/2013)
“The App Generation explores what it means to be “app-dependent” versus “app-enabled” and how life for this generation differs from life before the digital era.”—Jessie Moniz Hardy, The Royal Gazzette (9/19/2013)
Howard Gardner and Katie Davis pose questions about the future of the generation they portray in their new book on the American Scholar. (Fall 2013)
“[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 (8/18/2013)
“Provocative . . . Provides useful frameworks for future research.”—Publishers Weekly (8/5/2013)
“Elevates the discussion beyond knee-jerk complaints about ‘those #@#!! kids who are on their phones all day’.”—Mindful Magazine
“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
“Most discussions about youth and technology tilt toward one extreme (digital wonder-kids!) or the other (perpetual distractions!). In The App Generation, Howard Gardner and Katie Davis combine academic research with personal reflections to provide a more nuanced perspective on both the challenges and opportunities for young people as they navigate the dynamic digital currents in today’s society.”—Mitchel Resnick, LEGO Papert Professor of Learning Research and head of the Lifelong Kindergarten group at the MIT Media Lab
“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