Actually, for our family or 2 teens, 2 adults, the iPhone has let us really be creative…we turned our love of playing games in the car (word games, singing games), into a collection of 100 car games, an iPhone app called Family Car Games that gives instructions for all those games…most of which we created ourselves.

So we use the iPhone as a resource, not a refuge…we randomly pick a game to play, since we can’t remember all of ‘em. Then the iPhone goes off and we play word games, storytelling games, singing and radio games, mystery and invention games.

The iPhone can spark ideas and provide a library full of resources. The iPhone is great for answering questions in discussions, giving song lyrics so we can sing along with the radio…but it’s isolating if overused (and, in the car, nausea sets in, just like with DVDs and books).  So look up!

Playing games together completely stretches our creativity (we are all writers and songwriters, my daughter does artwork too). It’s nice to have the iPod Touch (in our case) to jot down ideas.

What matters to me is that lots of my leisure time is spent doing things that make me smile when I remember them…I can still remember parts of our wildest story games from trips a year ago*. We created our app because we wanted other families to be able to use their iPhone to find ways to make the most common time together (in the car going somewhere) creative and happy and fun for everyone, including the driver.

That’s the key, I think…an iPhone app that makes >real< life richer.

Have any of your iPhone apps triggered your off-the-phone creativity?

A sample game was included in a recent mention by a FoxNews.com columnist:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,529599,00.html

*Ok, truth be told, I actually remember "Yo-Yos of Yesteryear," the second-to-last entry in a game of Grandma Goes to the Beach that Todd and I played wa-a-a-ay before the kids were born.