The App Generation
***WARNING: This week’s post contains some adult
themes and topics***
The App Generation is a very insightful
look at how today’s youth are immersed in a digital world where the gateways
for connection to information and other people have never been more wide-open
and what that means for a generation that’s growing up in an app connected
world. Their lives, relationships, and how they think differ greatly in application than those
of us who grew up in the pre-digital era.
After
reading ‘The App Generation: How Today’s
Youth Navigate Identity, Intimacy, and Imagination in a Digital World’ I
came across this article from the BBC: http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20161201-the-sex-workers-selling-access-to-their-real-lives.
The article details how webcam models are selling access to their private lives
by selling access to their Snapchat accounts, as well as KIK and other social
media websites. They’re not just selling their nakedness, but also a peek into
their daily routines and real lives, albeit the best curated content, not
unlike the ‘best-selves’ we portray on Facebook and other social media. It also
states “…there is no longer anything
unusual about conducting intimate relationships online. Daniel Miller at
University College London, who studies the impact of webcams on human
interactions, takes it as given that video-based interactions carried out over
the internet can be as intimate as face-to-face human contact – and perhaps
more so. “It’s entirely possible that Snapchat allows a form of intimacy that
other methods don’t allow,” he says.”
I
thought article fit well with the chapter ‘Apps and Intimate Relationships’ especially
this book quote about how apps are shortcuts “These shortcuts make interacting with others much quicker, easier, and
less risky…such conveniences can
certainly enable meaningful relations and, at their best, strengthen and deepen
personal bonds.” (Emphasis added). The chapter also covers the ‘hook-up’
culture of today’s youth who would rather go through a series of causal sexual
relationships than to open themselves up to risk
an intimate committed relationship. Might these webcam models who are selling access to their ‘personal’ lives be filling an intimacy void to those who
seek out these sexually gratifying online interactions? One thing is for sure,
our online connected world is changing how we interact with others.
The
next article I came across on the same BBC site was: http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20161129-the-new-words-that-reveal-how-tech-has-changed-us.
I think this article goes along with the chapter ‘Personal Identity in the Age of the App’ as it covers how we are
now coming up with words to describe our addictions to our smartphones. Even in
the lighthearted defining of our smartphone usage we can identify with the
“bowed head tribe”. This digital age can blur the lines between our online and
offline identities or it can sharply contrast our online selves with our real
selves and our youth are taking comfort in the safety of an externalized,
packaged identity. Our youth, or digital natives, are immersed in all forms of
digital connection and of ways of putting themselves ‘out there.’ They know not
of a time when face to face interactions were the dominate way of how we
navigated our world.
In
the chapter Acts (and Apps) of Imagination the authors expand upon how our
youth find creative ways to express themselves in the confines of our
technologies, much like the early users of the telegraph soon found many more
uses for the telegraph than the creators intended, our youth are always pushing
the creative boundaries of what an app was originally created for. Imaginations,
they contend, are more likely to be facilitated with more efficient ways to
communicate them, and as we’ve come to know our current culture is as connected
of a world as there has been.
As
I read about this current app generation and think of how my students navigate
their own identities, intimacies, and imaginations I must take careful
consideration of whether they are an app-dependent or and app-enabled population.
I must craft my teaching designs to help them be app-enabled where they are using
the available technologies to broaden their possibilities as it relates to helping
them finding their place in the world. I must mindfully craft an environment in
my classroom that considers the differences of the app generation from the
pre-digital ones and enable my students to express themselves in ways that are
uniquely theirs.
P.S. I do not endorse those who
take part in the world’s oldest occupation. I merely found the article relevant
to the book in the fact that our growing digital world is changing the way some may
define intimacy.
