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investigating here.
    With respect to
identity formation:
Apps can short-circuit identity formation, pushing you into being someone else’s avatar (that of your parents, your friends, or one formulated by some app producer)—or, by foregrounding various options, they can allow you to approach identity formation more deliberately, holistically, thoughtfully. You may end up with a stronger and more powerful identity, or you may succumb to a prepackaged identity or to endless role diffusion.
    With respect to
intimacy:
Apps can facilitate superficial ties, discourage face-to-face confrontations and interactions, suggest that all human relations can be classified if not predetermined in advance—or they can expose you to a much wider world, provide novel ways of relating to people, while not preventing you from shutting off the devices as warranted—andthat puts YOU in charge of the APPS rather than vice versa. You may end up with deeper and longer-lasting relations to others, or with a superficial stance better described as cool, isolated, or transactional.
    With respect to
imagination:
Apps can make you lazy, discourage the development of new skills, limit you to mimicry or tiny trivial tweaks or tweets—or they can open up whole new worlds for imagining, creating, producing, remixing, even forging new identities and enabling rich forms of intimacy.
    The Flywheel can liberate you or keep you going around in circles.
    As for the probability of these various alternatives, heated debate already exists in the writings of the digerati. On the one side we find unabashed enthusiasts of the digital world. In the view of experts like danah boyd, Cathy Davidson, Henry Jenkins, Clay Shirky, and David Weinberger, the digital media hold the promise of ushering in an age of unparalleled democratic participation, mastery of diverse skills and areas of knowledge, and creative expression in various media, singularly or orchestrally. 13 As they see it, for perhaps the first time in human history, it is possible for each of us to have access to the full range of information and opinions, to inform ourselves, to make judicious decisions about or our own lives, to form links with others who want to achieve similar goals—be they political, economic, or cultural—and to benefit from the enhanced intelligence and wisdom enabled by a vast multi-networked system. On this perspective, a world replete with apps is a world in which endless options arise, with at least themajority tilted in positive, world-building, personally fulfilling directions. It’s a constructivist’s dream.
    Others are less sanguine. Nicholas Carr claims that, with their speed and brevity, the digital media encourage superficial thinking, thereby thwarting the sustained reading and reflection enabled broadly by the Gutenberg era. 14 Raising the stakes, Mark Bauerlein invokes the inflammatory epithet “the dumbest generation.” 15 Cass Sunstein fears that the digital media encourage us to consort with like-minded persons; far from exposing us to a range of opinions and broadening our horizons, the media enable—or, more perniciously, dictate—the creation of intellectual and artistic silos or echo chambers. 16 Sherry Turkle worries about an increasing sense of isolation and the demise of open, exploratory conversations, while Jaron Lanier laments threats to our poetic, musical, and artistic souls. 17 On this perspective, an app-filled world brings about dependence on the particulars of each currently popular app, and a general expectation that one’s future—indeed, the future itself—will be dictated by the technological options of the time. It’s a constructivist’s nightmare.
    Drawn from diverse sources, our data speak to these debates. As we argue in what follows, the emergence of an “app” culture allows individuals readily to enact superficial aspects of identity, intimacy, and imagination. Whether