This has been answered in the comments where it was noted that the following works:

df.astype({'date': 'datetime64[ns]'})

In addition, you can set the dtype when reading in the data:

pd.read_csv('path/to/file.csv', parse_dates=['date'])

A new answer to reflect the most current practices: as of now (v1.2.4), neither astype('str') nor astype(str) work.

As per the documentation, a Series can be converted to the string datatype in the following ways:

df['id'] = df['id'].astype("string")

df['id'] = pandas.Series(df['id'], dtype="string")

df['id'] = pandas.Series(df['id'], dtype=pandas.StringDtype)

End to end example:

import pandas as pd

# Create a sample DataFrame
data = {
    'Name': ['John', 'Alice', 'Bob', 'John', 'Alice'],
    'Age': [25, 30, 35, 25, 30],
    'City': ['New York', 'London', 'Paris', 'New York', 'London'],
    'Salary': [50000, 60000, 70000, 50000, 60000],
    'Category': ['A', 'B', 'C', 'A', 'B']
}

df = pd.DataFrame(data)

# Print the DataFrame
print("Original DataFrame:")
print(df)
print("\nData types:")
print(df.dtypes)
cat_cols_ = None
# Apply the code to change data types
if not cat_cols_:
    # Get the columns with object data type
    object_columns = df.select_dtypes(include=['object']).columns.tolist()
    
    if len(object_columns) > 0:
        print(f"\nObject columns found, converting to string: {object_columns}")
        
        # Convert object columns to string type
        df[object_columns] = df[object_columns].astype('string')
    
    # Get the categorical columns (including string and category data types)
    cat_cols_ = df.select_dtypes(include=['category', 'string']).columns.tolist()

# Print the updated DataFrame and data types
print("\nUpdated DataFrame:")
print(df)
print("\nUpdated data types:")
print(df.dtypes)
print(f"\nCategorical columns (cat_cols_): {cat_cols_}")

Original DataFrame:
    Name  Age      City  Salary Category
0   John   25  New York   50000        A
1  Alice   30    London   60000        B
2    Bob   35     Paris   70000        C
3   John   25  New York   50000        A
4  Alice   30    London   60000        B

Data types:
Name        object
Age          int64
City        object
Salary       int64
Category    object
dtype: object

Object columns found, converting to string: ['Name', 'City', 'Category']

Updated DataFrame:
    Name  Age      City  Salary Category
0   John   25  New York   50000        A
1  Alice   30    London   60000        B
2    Bob   35     Paris   70000        C
3   John   25  New York   50000        A
4  Alice   30    London   60000        B

Updated data types:
Name        string[python]
Age                  int64
City        string[python]
Salary               int64
Category    string[python]
dtype: object

Categorical columns (cat_cols_): ['Name', 'City', 'Category']

No need for apply, just use DataFrame.astype directly.

df.astype(np.float64)

apply-ing is also going to give you a pretty bad performance hit.

Example

df = pd.DataFrame(np.arange(10**7).reshape(10**4, 10**3))

%timeit df.astype(np.float64)
1 loop, best of 3: 288 ms per loop

%timeit df.apply(lambda x: x.astype(np.float64), axis=0)
1 loop, best of 3: 748 ms per loop

%timeit df.apply(lambda x: x.astype(np.float64), axis=1)
1 loop, best of 3: 2.95 s per loop

The object dtype is how pandas stores strings in dataframes. If for some particular reason you absolutely can't have that data as an object dtype, you're going to have to save it to something other than a dataframe.

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/21018654/strings-in-a-dataframe-but-dtype-is-object

There is no "string" datatype. In pandas, strings are stored as objects.

In numpy, you can have string datatypes, but they're fixed-length, so there's still no "string datatype". There's a datatype for 5-character strings, a datatype for 10-character strings, etc., but no datatype for "strings" per se. Pandas uses object as the datatype for strings so that you can perform size-changing manipulations on the strings (e.g., concatenating them with other strings) without having to recreate the entire column with a new string length.