How Social Media Impacts Creativity

Creativity and boredom go hand in hand. In the absence of stimulation, the mind gains the ability to engage in imagination. Yet in a society dominated by technology and social media, chronic boredom is slowly being eliminated, and creative genius is becoming increasingly rare. 

Many of my fondest memories from my younger years trace back to moments of boredom. When I had expended my allotted screen time and was forced to entertain myself, I would often create new games with my siblings or invent stories with my friends. It was during these moments of boredom that I was forced to think creatively in order to make my own entertainment. However, as technology and social media began to play a more active role in my life, I noticed that these moments of boredom became less frequent and that my creativity began to suffer. 

According to a recent study completed by psychologists at the University of Arkansas, this phenomenon that I experienced has some scientific ground to stand on . Through this study, researchers concluded that people who think more creatively are less likely to be active on social media or addicted to their phones. From a logical perspective, these findings make sense. If creativity comes from boredom and technology “cures” boredom, then technology also “cures” creativity. 

Social media is particularly detrimental to creativity as it is designed to keep consumers engaged for as long as possible, thus perpetually preventing boredom. Social media apps like Tik Tok and Instagram use algorithms to learn specific user preferences and are designed to feed curated content to consumers, which will keep them scrolling. As a result, the vast majority of social media users no longer experience boredom. With an infinite amount of engaging, viewer specific content to view, it's easy to spend hours upon hours scrolling through these apps. And, when individuals do find themself bored, instead of leaning into that boredom and searching for a creative solution, it has become all too easy to pick up a smartphone and cure that boredom instantly.

Without a certain level of boredom, deep creativity and quality imagination cannot be achieved. In modern society, smartphone addiction and increased social media use is causing the elimination of boredom as societal creativity is suffering as a result.