Free The App Generation by Howard Gardner, Katie Davis Page A

majority of Danielle’s vids feature scenes from the scifi television series
Stargate Atlantis,
though more recent vids draw from movies. In addition to expressing her imagination, Danielle uses her vids to convey political messages, typically of a feminist bent.
    The vidding community that Danielle belongs to on LiveJournal represents an important part of her vidding experience. There, she learns technical skills from more seasoned vidders, receives constructive feedback on the work she shares, and offers her own feedback on others’ work. This community isn’t limited to the virtual world. Days after her first interview, Danielle flew to Chicago with her best friend to attend a vidding conference where she was excited to meet some of the more “famous” vidders who have mentored her on LiveJournal.
    A variety of other social media platforms besides LiveJournal—many of which are available in app form—give youth the opportunity to share their creative work with others. Figment is a “social network for young-adult fiction”—in the words of cofounder Jacob Lewis, a former managing editor of the
New Yorker
—where teens can share their creative writing with other teen authors. Like other social network sites, teens create a profile page that includes a profile picture, a self-description, a list of followers, group memberships (such as “The Poets of Figment” and “Queer Figs”), and a wall for other users to write comments. Given the literaryfocus of the site, profile pages also include a list of favorite authors, links to the profile owner’s original writings as well as reviews about other writings, and the array of badges that the teen has earned from his or her participation on the site. (A few examples: the “Wordsmith” badge, awarded when a teen has posted ten original pieces; the “Bookworm” badge, awarded when a teen has read twenty-five writings by other teens; and the “Critic” badge, awarded when a teen has written thirty reviews). DeviantART, another site with a similar setup, focuses on visual art instead of creative writing. Sites like these open up exciting possibilities for youth creators to share and receive feedback on their work.
    There’s much to be excited about in these examples of creative expression in the digital era. Scrolling through the writing and art on sites like Figment and deviantART, it’s clear that many young people are using these digital tools to exercise their imaginations. And yet, one wonders what sort of exercise they’re getting with these tools. Take Danielle’s vids as a case in point. There are certainly those who celebrate vidding and other forms of remixing as original and creative acts of artistic expression. 4 Others, however, argue that there’s nothing original about reusing work created by others. 5 Of course, this argument existed before the arrival of digital media technologies—think of Marcel Duchamp’s toilet “fountain” or Andy Warhol’s soup cans. The argument is simply brought into sharper relief in this copy-and-paste culture.
    There’s also a question of whether the constraints built intoapps and other computer software adversely restrict the creative process. Thinking back to our opening example of young children being introduced to a new toy, we raise the question of whether children are better off making up their own games in the backyard or playing video games designed by professional game designers. 6 Even when media aren’t part of the creative act itself, one wonders how young people’s steady diet of text messages, Facebook updates, tweets, and streaming music affects their ability to engage deeply in the creative process and, sooner or later, strike out on their own.
IMAGINING, THEN AND NOW
    Before we consider how apps and other digital media affect imagination, let’s first explore whether young