The App Generation (11 page)

According to the religious leaders we interviewed, the broadening of identities open to youth has had a notable effect on their spiritual lives. They suggested that young people are less likely to embrace membership in a given religious community unquestioningly, particularly the communities in which they were raised. Rather, their sympathies are distributed across multiple interest groups. “Young people . . . feel responsible to the city, the world, South America,” reflected one rabbi, discussing the challenge of negotiating multiple identities in today's global, interconnected world. “There's no strong sense of connection to [the Jewish] people. . . . Do they understand that there's a Jewish community?” In the event that youth do try to engage with familial traditions, their spiritual engagement may be based on limited or no faith-specific information. A minister noted that the young Christians with whom he engages are “uninformed about their place in the cosmos” (though he did add that they are also sheepish about their ignorance).

Other researchers have observed a similar pattern. Students are aware of and interested in global perspectives, but most lack an understanding of global issues and are weak in cultural
knowledge. One study conducted in the mid-2000s revealed high percentages of young people reporting a lack of even name recognition of many public figures well known at the time, such as then Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulsen and Chinese leader Hu Jintao.
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They were far more likely to recognize entertainment figures like the performers Miley Cyrus and Pink. According to the study's authors, today's young people “talk global, but act local.” Rather than trying to use the language of the country being visited, it's much easier just to activate a translation app.

The religious leaders suggested a distinction between youth's curiosity about different perspectives, experiences, and practices, on the one hand, and the focused, sustained attention that's required for a deeper understanding, on the other. Indeed, one educator believes that the apparent increase in racial harmony among students comes with a certain cost: “In some ways, it's a good thing that [kids today] have a lot more friends from different backgrounds; they're more accepting, they're more understanding. But I don't know that there's as much of an understanding that a lot of this stuff [racial discrimination] still exists and there's still a tie between racism and economic disparity.” Apparently, greater
acceptance
of diverse cultures, lifestyles, and perspectives has not always been accompanied by a greater
understanding
of the source and implications of these differences. We'll explore this lack of understanding and its implications further when we consider the nature of intimacy in today's youth.

By connecting us to people and places beyond our immediate geographic setting, technology has played a central role in creating today's globalized world. Apps serve as portals to this world. Whether you prefer to read, listen, or watch, news apps can bring you the latest events from every corner of the globe, while social networking and microblogging apps can bring you the viewpoints of the people living there. An important word here is “can”—the opportunity to broaden our perspectives doesn't necessarily translate into action. Consider that, at the time of this writing, seven of the ten most downloaded free apps on iTunes were games. Moreover, there's evidence from several quarters that people are more likely to visit sites that reinforce rather than challenge their beliefs.
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The educators of low-income youth reflected on how digital media have altered their students' awareness of and relationship to the wider world. In many respects this change is positive, as it broadens students' awareness of experiences and opportunities beyond their immediate, circumscribed environments. But there is also a downside to such exposure. One educator noted that because of the Internet and other media, “now kids know they're poor,” because they're exposed constantly to privileged lives that aren't theirs. This state of affairs can reinforce a sense of hopelessness even as it may raise some young people's goals and expectations of what they might achieve.

Still, many people—including youth—are optimistic about the Internet's power to expand our horizons and enrich our lives. In his book
Here Comes Everybody,
Clay Shirky suggests that the bowling leagues, lodges and rotary clubs of the fifties and sixties have not simply vanished; rather they have been replaced by a far greater number of online communities representing a wider range of interests.
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No matter how obscure one's interest, it can find expression and validation online, whether it be down the street or halfway around the globe.
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For young people, this access to “digital alter-egos” means that their identities as fan girls, gamers, chess players, or knitters don't have to be set aside to fit into a narrow peer culture.
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The girls who participated in our study of teen bloggers described the value they place on being able to express their more marginalized identities online. One college freshman, Samantha, used LiveJournal, an online journaling community with a strong fan culture, to participate in fan communities surrounding the
Harry Potter
series and her favorite TV shows, including
The Office
and
Roswell.
She observed, “I can definitely be more of a deranged fan girl in my LiveJournal than I can in real life. . . . I don't have to, like, kind of censor myself. It's not even really censoring myself in real life; it's kind of recognizing that people aren't that interested and kind of dropping off before I freak them out.” At least for those who have the skills and the inclination to describe their more personal thoughts, apps can be enabling rather than restricting.

The app metaphor helps us to see how the changes we've explored in youth's identities—increasingly externalized, packaged selves; a growing anxiety and aversion to risk-taking; and a broadening of acceptable identities—are each products of our time. As portals to the world, apps can broaden young people's awareness of and access to experiences and identities beyond their immediate environment.

Whether youth take advantage of these opportunities remains an open question. As visual icons that are selected to personalize one's phone, apps reflect young people's emphasis on external appearances and individualism. Apps also function as safety nets, removing many of the daily risks we previously took for granted, such as confronting a person's unfiltered reaction to a sensitive topic or finding one's way in an unfamiliar locale. These connections between the identities of today's youth and the qualities of apps illustrate our central argument. New media technologies can open up new opportunities for self-expression. But yoking one's identity too closely to certain characteristics of these technologies—and lacking the time, opportunity, or inclination to explore life and lives offline—may result in an impoverished sense of self.

R
EMEMBER THAT FAMOUS TAG
line, “Reach out and touch someone?” AT&T first used it for an ad campaign in the early 1980s to convey the power of telephones to bring people together across geographic boundaries (the corporation was trying to sell long-distance calling at the time—a service that's become increasingly difficult to promote in the age of Skype and other voice-over IP services). By giving us an array of tools, formats, and platforms to connect to others, apps have transformed what it means to reach out and touch someone. Whether exchanging a private joke with one friend through Snapchat or WhatsApp Messenger or sharing a memorable experience with eight hundred friends on Facebook or Tumblr, connecting with others has never been easier—or more constant. Whether, and in which ways, these developments are good or bad for the quality of our interpersonal relationships constitutes the focus of this chapter.

Just how have our deeply rooted, long-term connections to
other people been affected by the unprecedented connectivity afforded by new media technologies? Our investigations suggest that this connectivity certainly has its value—helping friends and family keep in touch when separated by geography; providing opportunities for young people with similar interests to find and interact with one another; and making it easier for some youth to disclose their personal feelings to others.
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And yet there may be a dark side to mediated communication, as we'll see when we consider the negative consequences of conducting relationships at arm's length, round-the-clock, and simultaneously, and only with those who reinforce one's worldview. Ultimately, we find that the quality of our relationships in this app era depends on whether we use our apps to bypass the discomforts of relating to others or as sometimes risky entry points to the forging of sustained, meaningful interactions.

Today's youth communicate in fundamentally different ways from their predigital counterparts. With their ability to transcend geographic and temporal barriers, Internet-enabled cell phones, tablets, and laptops—each with their arsenal of apps for all occasions—have altered what can be said, where, and to whom. Perhaps the most notable change is the constancy and immediacy of communication made possible by mobile technology. As of 2013, the Pew Research Center reports that
78 percent of all adolescents in the United States own a cell phone.
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This statistic means that for nearly four out of every five American teens, their family members and friends are never more than a text message (or tweet or Snapchat) away. The data on teens' text messaging behaviors suggest that teens take full advantage of this ability to engage in frequent, on-the-run communication. Sixty-three percent of teens say they text every day with people in their lives, and the typical teen sends about sixty text messages per day (among older girls, that number jumps to a hundred).
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And now, with the widespread use of app-filled smartphones, the range of operations that teens can perform on the go has extended far beyond phone calls and texting.

What are teens saying through their apps, and to whom? As it turns out, a considerable portion of teens' computer-mediated communication is dedicated to making (and sometimes breaking) on-the-fly arrangements to meet up with their friends in person. In one of our studies, we asked teens what they would miss most about not having a cell phone.
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Sixteen-year-old Justin answered, “Just being able to make plans on the go, and stuff, because me and my friends, we don't really plan things. We just go out.” The app mentality supports the belief that just as information, goods, and services are always and immediately accessible, so too are people. Scholars in the mobile communication field have dubbed such in-the-moment planning “microcoordination” and observe that it can slide into “hypercoordination” when teens start to feel left out of
their social circles if separated from their mobile devices for any period of time.
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Not all mediated communications serve a logistical purpose; many function as “virtual taps on the shoulder,” establishing and maintaining a sense of connection among friends who are physically separated.
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When asked what he and his friends text each other about, one of our study participants, fourteen-year-old Aaron, explained, “Just like, ‘How was school? How's life? What you been up to?' because I think texting is, like, an easy way to keep in contact.” Aaron noted that such conversations sometimes last throughout the day. There may be breaks while one or both friends go to class or eat dinner, but before long they return to their cell phone screens to resume their conversation. For seventeen-year-old Jenni, texting is a way to fill time when there is nothing else to do: “[Texting] is kind of just like touching base, and just kind of like when I am bored, and I am like, hmm, what can I do? Meghan is always around. I will talk to her.”

Though most common among friends and romantic partners, microcoordination and virtual taps on the shoulder have become standard among families as well. Cell phones allow family members to make plans and coordinate their schedules in a more fluid, impromptu way than was feasible in years past. If a teen child decides in the middle of the day that she wants to go to a friend's house after school rather than return home, it's easy to call or text a parent for permission. And, as discussed in the previous chapter, parents can—and do—use
cell phones and Facebook to check in with their college-age children and stay plugged into the daily rhythm of their lives.
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Accessibility isn't the only new and noteworthy quality associated with today's communication technologies. Social networking sites have transformed many social interactions into considerably more public affairs than they would have been in predigital times. In addition to phone calls and in-person communiqués, the Facebook wall offers a new—and very public—means to plan and chronicle social events and shared experiences. Who's invited to a party and who's not becomes a matter of public record, as do all activities—however cringe-worthy—that are captured and uploaded by a cell phone camera. The beginnings and endings of relationships are similarly documented in a far more public manner than in years past.
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While Facebook communications are more public than the typical face-to-face conversation, other computer-mediated communications may feel more private to young people. Texting and instant messaging typically involve just two conversation partners, making them more intimate than wall-to-wall exchanges on Facebook. For some youth, these typed exchanges may feel even more intimate than face-to-face conversations. The fact that conversation partners look into a screen instead of each other's eyes, coupled with the fact that—more often than not—they don't occupy the same physical space may make it feel less risky and uncomfortable to share personal feelings with another person.
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One of the teens we interviewed, fifteen-year-old Christina, explained why she prefers text-based forms of communication: “I am not a good person
with feelings, and, like, I am not that good with saying my feelings face to face sometimes because I don't like people to see how I think and what I am feeling.” Other research studies have documented a similar preference among youth for text-based forms of self-disclosure.
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