Last week, we had the opportunity to see a talk by Howard Gardner and Katie Davis about their new book The App Generation: How Today’s Youth Navigate Identity, Intimacy, and Imagination in a Digital World. Those of you that work in formal and informal education are probably familiar with Gardner’s earlier research including his Theory of Multiple Intelligences and work with Project Zero (if not, click on the links provided to learn more).
In this current work, Gardner and Davis set out to examine how texting, tweeting, Facebook, and other technology trends have impacted the first generation of digital natives. Through various data driven research methodologies, they have drawn several interesting conclusions.
- Characteristics of the current generation of youth: more risk-averse, have a discomfort with ambiguity, more accepting of a range of identities, hyper-connected with parents. The researchers do acknowledge that these characteristics may have been influenced by variables other than technology use.
