Elina Spradlin, Eric Yang, Luke Gandy, Alexander Gjurich, William Kiski

Professor Barbara Presnell

UWRT 1104-042

14 February 2019

How Technology Affects Creativity

Imagine a young child in a playroom at their house. The year is 2007. At this time this

young child does not have access to technology such as an iPad or an iPhone, let alone the

internet. The most hand held device that most parents had at this time was their flip phone and

maybe an iPod to listen to music on. This results in the child finding stimulation from places

outside of technology like the outside or reading. Children being raised from before the 2000s

through the early 2000s were raised very differently from the children being born into society

now. Flash forward to 2015, imagine a child in a restaurant with their parents. The parents have

placed their smartphone or their iPad in the hands of their child to keep them occupied. Not only

is the child not talking but they are also disconnected from the conversation taking place

amongst the family. Their stimulation is not received from the outside world such as people

around them or reading or conversation, it is attained by means of technology. Today you find

technology integrated into everything thing that is part of human society. You will be hard-

pressed to see something that at some point used technology. This phenomenon raised a

question amongst our group. We wondered how this growth in technology and the rather sudden

and expansive integration of technology into most everything today is impacting the growing

minds of individuals and how does it impact how we form ideas and be creative. All in all, how

has technology affected creativity? This is a question I feel that many people especially
educators, parents, and companies or agencies have asked in recent years with the growth of

technology. In our UWRT class, we delved into the relationship between people and their

smartphone concerning conversation and meaningful relationships. While this might not

necessarily touch on creativity and technology, we believe that a part of one's creativity comes

from the outside world and the people you surround yourself with. Both the pros and cons were

identified in this discussion. There are various views, and studies that have been made on this

matter and our group set out to research and uncover more in terms of answering this question.

To gain more information to answer our question, our group utilized various avenues to

gather our information. A survey was made asking individuals multiple questions about

technology and how it impacts their creativity level. Questions such as "What is your view on

technology?", "How do you feel technology has affected your level of creativity," and "What

form of technology do you feel causes a greater level of creativity?" was used to gauge the

individual's opinions on technology concerning creativity. These questions were followed by

demographic questions such as age range, major type, and occupation which included student if

the individual is not working. The survey was sent out via instant messaging and social media to

a random assortment of individuals to receive a broad range of response in terms of age, major,

and occupation. This survey was followed by a set of interviews that were compiled into a video.

A small group of five people was selected to answer four open-ended questions related to the

questions in the survey. This group of people was all college students from various majors which

included engineering and German, theater education, computer science, and undeclared. Due to

restrictions in terms of finding people to interview, we were limited to using only people in a

college environment. The questions that were asked were " What are the pros and cons of

technology and how has it affected creativity," " What is one piece of technology that has helped
people create the most," " Do you believe that technology makes it easier for people to create and

share their work?", and " Do you think schools should integrate more technology into their

curriculum." These questions were used because we felt that they encompass the overall idea of

the answers that we are looking for in terms of the relationship between creativity and

technology, what technology has impacted creativity the most, and how the integration of

creativity and technology can be used to educate people, especially in school. Our final part of

our research was from outside sources such as studies and articles written on the relationship

between creativity and technology. Our findings in these sources brought our research full circle.

During our research, we uncovered a common theme amongst our outside sources. One

of our goals in answer our main question was to find the pros and cons on the matter. It became

quite evident and surprising that there were far more studies and articles written on the

advantages of the relationship between creativity and technology and very few and far between

in terms of the cons on the matter. Many of us tried to find studies and articles on the

disadvantages of creativity and technology, and only one outside source goes into the cons of

technology. This blog post titled “The Beauty of Boredom: How Technology Can Ruin Your

Creativity” goes into how people in today's society are unable to use their boredom to their

advantage because their automatic reaction when they are bored is to turn to their devices. The

blog post urges readers to think about the last time that they were genuinely uninterested and the

writer proceeds to make a compelling argument which in part states, “some of the greatest minds

in history - Nietzche, Steve Jobs, Beethoven - ... made a point to be intentionally bored, and

landed on some of the most important ideas in history because of it” (TheBeauty). In other

words, to create an outlet for your creativity, this post suggests that you eliminate any

distractions such as technology so that your mind is not fixated on a singular thing and to allow
the mind the freedom to wander with no bounds. This period of boredom allows the mind to

create with only your thoughts, and they believe that this is the true key to human creativity. In

the interviews conducted, the individual was asked about the pros and cons of technology. In

continuation with the cons of technology, responses that were received for the cons of

technology consisted of susceptibility of people stealing others idea, difficulty for people who

are not technologically savvy and therefore not being able to be creative through technology, and

being that technology makes it easier to access and upload any information, there happens to also

be a lot of “garbage” that people need to sift through in order to find substantial material.

On a different vein, the pros of creativity and technology, as stated before, were easier to

find supporting evidence for. From our outside sources an article titled "Technology's Impact on

the Creative Potential of Youth" talks about the evolution in how people gather and store

information in different means has changed throughout the ages. The author, Jim Rubin, goes

time-period and how the means of how they gather and store information impact people ability

for creative thinking. More was talked about in terms of how people through each period were

hesitant and critical of the new ways of storing information. The author talks about during the

time of Plato that reading was thought not to allow the minds to grow and would "cease to

exercise memory" (Rubin). This article was summed up with the fact that throughout time when

different ways of learning and expression were introduced that were not the norm at the time,

they were heavily criticized and frowned upon. The author provides an interesting observation in

that, studies have shown that engaging with technology activates part of the brain that reading

from physical texts do not and that children are evolving to learn and think creatively in a new

way through technology that adults are not used to. This article can be bolstered with the

findings from a study done in 2011 on children at the age of 12. The name of this study is called
“ Information Technology Use and Creativity: Findings from the Children and Technology

Project." The children were tested using what was called the Torrance Test of creativity that

consisted of various tasks for the children to perform. The results of this study showed that there

is a relationship between video games and creativity amongst the children. This information can

be used to help companies and inventors to incorporate education into video games to stimulate

creativity in youth. As many of us have most likely experienced, adults and more specifically

parents have always deemed video games as unproductive uses of time and will not help youth

become "smarter." However, as seen in this study, video games to help facilitate and bolster

creativity in young minds. With the growing awareness of the relationship between creativity

and technology, the creators of technology are finding new ways to incorporate a way to

stimulate youth to help stimulate creativity. From our survey, the results showed that the

majority of the 59 people the submitted responses voted that they either view technology as a

necessity or that they need it occasionally and the majority voted between a 3-5 rating in terms of

how technology has affected their level of creativity. Additionally, it was not to our surprise that

people voted that they think schools should integrate more technology into traditional

curriculums.

After all our investigating, we know one thing for, and that is there is far more

information supporting the pros of the relationship between technology and creativity. This,

however, was not a surprising realization. We think that this is the case because it is a commonly

asked question in society today in terms of how technology impacts creativity and productivity in

the classroom and the workplace. These findings line up with our expectations in terms of

finding more information on the pros rather than the cons. However, in reference to our primary

question, the answers that we wanted to attain were from both sides of the spectrum as in both
the pros and cons. Overall, our finding and our interpretation of the findings agree with one

another. Our consensus on our results came down to the understanding that technology can be

used as a beautiful tool to help bolster creativity and help individuals learn in a way that is not as

linear. The results from studies that provide evidence to technology initiating creativity can be

used to understanding the balance between creativity and technology and enable society to create

and modify technology in the future to fit the fluidity of young minds of this generation and

enrich the outlets that are provided to them to reach a new level of creativity which will in turn

help the growth of society.

In today's society, younger generations gravitate more towards learning opportunities that

involve technology. Additionally, technology has become so integrated into everything that we

do that it is practically impossible to escape it. With that being said, to initiate growth for future

generation, technology needs to be tailored cultivating and nurturing the growing minds of youth

in today's society. As mentioned before, it is essential to understand the pros and cons of

technology as well as how it interacts with productivity and creativity. Technology can be

integrated even more into the education system and workplaces. This integration is slowly being

seen in places such a cybersecurity training. There have been various studies showing that the

results from almost all studies on games in cybersecurity training and education on a general

basis have all been positive and shown strong results in the increase in productivity and

prevention (Hendrix, Al-Sherbaz, & Victoria). There is now more reason for education and

workplace training to allow for creativity through technology. With the average adult, creativity

goes down as you get older due to experience and set bias in from personal experiences . If we

start at a younger age and try to hang on to the creativity that a child has, we can prosper in the

future. All in all, as technology grows and the integration of technology continues, understand
the balance between creativity and technology. This in turn will produce more productivity and

innovations in the future.

Work Cited

Hendrix, Maurice, Ali Al-Sherbaz, and Bloom Victoria. "Game based cyber security training: are

serious games suitable for cyber security training?." International Journal of Serious

Games 3.1 (2016): 53-61.http://nectar.northampton.ac.uk/8279/1/Hendrix20168279.pdf

Jackson, Linda A., et al. "Information Technology Use and Creativity: Findings from the

Children and Technology Project." Computers in Human Behavior 28.2 (2011): 370–376.
 Web.

https://librarylink.uncc.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true

&db=a9h&AN=115955504&site=ehost-live&scope=site.

Kiski, Will, et al. “Creativity vs. Technology.” Google Docs,

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScfpopg0WHFTpmTMgNcqXIjjFM4g4HGc2V8iFh

FZz1Tq_nytA/viewform?usp=drive_web&usp=embed_facebook. Accessed 14 Feb. 2019.

Rubin, Jim. “Technology’s Impact on the Creative Potential of Youth.” Creativity Research

Journal, vol. 24, no. 2/3, Apr. 2012, pp. 252–56. a9h, EBSCOhost,

https://librarylink.uncc.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true

&db=a9h&AN=76446301&site=ehost-live&scope=site.

“The Beauty of Boredom: How Technology Can Ruin Your Creativity.” Centre for

Technology Awareness, Adam Daniel Media, 8 Nov. 2016.

https://technologyawareness.org/2016/11/08/the-beauty-of-boredom-how-technology-

can-ruin-your-creativity/.