The nutshell: Risk-averse. Dependent. Superficial. Narcissistic. All of these are adjectives employed by developmental psychologists Gardner and Davis to describe the Web 2.0 generation. They argue that today’s kids are dependent on apps—from maps that prevent them from getting lost to social media that keep them in constant contact with one another.

Literary lovechild of: Sherry Turkle’s Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet and Jean M. Twenge’s Generation Me: Why Today’s Young Americans Are More Confident, Assertive, Entitled—and More Miserable Than Ever Before.

You’ll find it on your bookshelf if: You want to understand why your child blocked you from posting on her Facebook wall. It seems ungrateful, given how every day for six months you made sure to post a few links you thought she’d like.

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