With Apple’s recent announcement that customers spent over $10 billion on the App Store in 2013, darunter mehr $1 billion in December alone (over three billion apps were downloaded), there can be no doubt in anyone’s mind that the app culture just continues to rise. But as apps become more and more significant in our society, are they opening up our world or are they shutting it down? How are the advantages of face to face contact as relevant when we have cutting-edge, digital toys to interact with?
Heute in Die globale Suche nach Bildung, DR. Howard Gardner and Katie Davis discuss with me what they believe it means to be “app-dependent” gegen “app-enabled,” and how life for today’s generation differs from life before the digital era. Gardner and Davis are the authors of the meticulously researched and thought-provoking book, Die App-Generation: How Today’s Youth Navigate Identity, Intimacy, and Imagination in a Digital World.
Howard Gardner ist der John H. und Elisabeth A. Hobbs Professor für Kognition und Erziehungswissenschaften an der Harvard Graduate School of Education. Katie Davis is an Assistant Professor at the University of Washington Information School, where she studies the role of digital media technologies in adolescents’ akademisch, Sozial-, and moral lives.
Do you believe that apps increase productivity? Wenn ja, do you see any drawbacks?
There is no question that apps allow us to do many things more quickly and thus free us to take on more tasks and perhaps more different projects. What is important is that the user remains in charge–that the app enables productivity, rather than encourage dependency. In Die App-Generation, we quote Alfred North Whitehead, who says that civilization advances by virtue of the number of important operations that one can perform without thinking about them. Sounds great, at first! But then we raise the question – who is to decide what is important? We’d like to keep that decision for ourselves, rather than turning it over to any technology, no matter how clever or powerful it may appear.
What are some of the challenges adolescents experience when using apps? Beispielsweise, how do apps impact their physical and emotional health?
It is not the apps themselves that impact adolescents but the way adolescents use apps. In dem Buch, we distinguish between app-enablement and app-dependence. Adolescents who are app-enabled use apps as jumping off points to spark their imaginations, explore their interests, and forge new relationships or strengthen existing ones. The affordances of new media technologies may be particularly beneficial to those youth who, in a pre-internet, pre-app era, had difficulty finding an outlet for their creativity or a community with which to share their non-mainstream interests.
Im Gegensatz, adolescents who exhibit app-dependence will look to apps before they look inside themselves for answers to questions, for interpersonal connection, even for providing their sense of themselves. Such dependence can also have physical ramifications like sleep deprivation. Viele Jugendliche finden es schwierig, das Telefon weg zu einer vernünftigen Zeit zu setzen, wenn es eine Vielzahl von Anwendungen an die Hand, viele von ihnen äußerst “klebrig.”
In der heutigen wettbewerbsorientierten sozialen Online-Welt, “Berühmtheit” is largely about who has the most likes and/or the most followers. Many believe that those individuals who have championed the art of digital fame are the most creative and also have the strongest sense of identity. Would you agree or disagree and why?
We would strongly disagree. Creativity denotes the ability to come up with something that is original and that ultimately affects how other people see and act. Identity denotes a sense of self with which one is comfortable, and that also makes sense to those with whom one lives and interacts.
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. We doubt that Albert Einstein (an outstanding creator) or Nelson Mandela (with his powerful sense of identity) would have spent much time on Facebook!
Can you briefly explain the positive and negative ways you believe technology can promote intimacy?
Our work has focused particularly on the new digital technologies. Social media, dating apps, and the like certainly make it possible to get in touch with many people and can help us find someone who shares our backgrounds, interests, aspirations. These options are especially helpful for persons who are eccentric.
We believe, jedoch, that genuine intimacy requires individuals to be together, face-to-face over significant periods of time, and to have multi-faceted conversations, including ones that may be difficult or sensitive. In dem Maße, Technik versucht, oberflächlich oder asynchrone Kontakte für lange und tiefe diejenigen ersetzen, it undermines intimacy.
Kids experience bullying and invasion of privacy in both a face-to-face world and a digital world. Do you believe one world is any worse than the other, und warum?
Egal, wie sie erlebt wird, Mobbing ist schmerzhaft. Und wie Behörden wie Emily Bazelon haben betont,, it is ultimately destructive as well for the bully. In face-to-face bullying, Sie zumindest sehen die Reaktion der anderen Person – je nachdem, wie sadistisch der Tyrann ist, dass die direkte Konfrontation der Augäpfel kann entweder verstärken oder unterschreiten das Mobbing.
There is one facet of bullying today that is infinitely worse than in earlier times. It can now – und oft tut – auftreten 24-7, not just in school or on the playground. Victims often cannot keep from accessing their messages, thereby playing right into the keystrokes of the bully, night and day.
Apps are here to stay. How can we preserve the best practices of face-to-face interaction while engaging these tools which define a new generation?
What are the advantages of face-to-face interaction? We would say having the opportunity, as well as the obligation, to monitor how the other person is reacting to our message – whether it be a message of love, of disagreement, or threat. It is simply more difficult to ignore the ‘pragmatics’ of a statement when it is uttered in your presence – complete with tone of voice, with facial and bodily expression, und darüber hinaus, with eyes – looking at you directly, or squinting out of the corner of your eye, or averting your eyes altogether. And it is more difficult for others to ignore Ihre feelings, Leidenschaften, and intent as well.
The challenge of maintaining face-to-face interaction begins at home and continues at school. If parents model such direct interaction with one another and with friends and family, then young persons will understand its configuration and its effectiveness. The same point obtains with respect to school – what teachers and older peers model is what will be learned and practiced.
One thing is sure: if adults themselves avoid face-to-face interactions, then young people will as well. Huge dimensions of human experience will be lost – imagine Mona Lisa peering at her device, or Rhett Butler and Scarlett O’Hara communicating via Facebook or Twitter.
Thinking ahead perhaps ten years from now, what additional research should be done to evaluate the benefits and drawbacks of apps?
A question that we researchers love to hear! We’d be particularly interested in the effects, on young and old, of putting aside their devices for awhile, and spending time in ‘app-free’ environments. No doubt there would be initial frustration but we speculate – more technically, wir hypothesize – that individuals will discover aspects of themselves, their environments, and their peers that have been obscured by our current over-dependence on devices and apps.
On the positive side, we are interested in the differences between apps that enable (allow us to do things that we could not do before) and apps that make us dependent (apps that cut off options and leave us without skills or understanding should we find ourselves deprived of the apps). Anything that we can do to promote app-enablement will be very important.
And as the ultimate reward there is app-transcendence – the capacity, at will, to toss aside the apps and the devices and let our imaginations and skills reign free. Our poster boy for app-transcendence: Steve Jobs!
Pictures are courtesy of Government of Alberta, Howard Gardner and Dwight School Seoul.
In der globalen Suche nach Bildung, mit mir und weltweit renommierten Vordenkern wie Sir Michael Barber (Vereinigtes Königreich), DR. Michael Block (US-), DR. Leon Botstein (US-), Professor Ton Christensen (US-), DR. Linda Hammond-Liebling (US-), DR. Madhav Chavan (Indien), Professor Michael Fullan (Kanada), Professor Howard Gardner (US-), Professor Andy Hargreaves (US-), Professor Yvonne Hellman (Niederlande), Professor Kristin Helstad (Norwegen), Jean Hendrickson (US-), Professor Rose Hipkins (Neuseeland), Professor Cornelia Hoogland (Kanada), Herr Jeff Johnson (Kanada), Frau. Chantal Kaufmann (Belgien), DR. Eija Kauppinen (Finnland), Staatssekretär Tapio Kosunen (Finnland), Professor Dominique Lafontaine (Belgien), Professor Hugh Lauder (Vereinigtes Königreich), Professor Ben Levin (Kanada), Herr Ken Macdonald (Vereinigtes Königreich), Professor Barry McGaw (Australien), Shiv Nadar (Indien), Professor R. Natarajan (Indien), DR. PAK NG (Singapur), DR. Denise Papst (US), Sridhar Rajagopalan (Indien), DR. Diane Ravitch (US-), Richard Wilson Riley (US-), Sir Ken Robinson (Vereinigtes Königreich), Professor Pasi Sahlberg (Finnland), Professor Manabu Sato (Japan), Andreas Schleicher (PISA, OECD), DR. Anthony Seldon (Vereinigtes Königreich), DR. David Shaffer (US-), DR. Kirsten Sivesind (Norwegen), Kanzler Stephen Spahn (US-), Yves Theze (Lycee Francais US-), Professor Charles Ungerleider (Kanada), Professor Tony Wagner (US-), Sir David Watson (Vereinigtes Königreich), Professor Dylan Wiliam (Vereinigtes Königreich), DR. Mark Wormald (Vereinigtes Königreich), Professor Theo Wubbels (Niederlande), Professor Michael Young (Vereinigtes Königreich), und Professor Zhang Minxuan (China) wie sie das große Bild Bildung Fragen, die alle Nationen heute konfrontiert erkunden. Die Global Search for Education Community-Seite
C. M. Rubin ist der Autor von zwei weit Lese Online-Serie für den sie eine 2011 Upton Sinclair Auszeichnung, “Die globale Suche nach Bildung” und “Wie werden wir gelesen?” Sie ist auch der Autor von drei Bestseller-Bücher, Inklusive The Real Alice im Wunderland.
Folgen Sie C. M. Rubin auf Twitter: www.twitter.com/@cmrubinworld
Jüngste Kommentare