Technology use and creativity in children and what it means for the adult mind
I will never forget the day that I got my first laptop. A black, bulky, 2007 (I think?) Toshiba. It was nothing special, I couldn’t even do much with it, what was I gonna do? Get on Facebook and talk to friends? Nope. I was too young to understand, or even care about social media. My life revolved around school and my family. The Toshiba laptop handed down to me by my parents served only three purposes, writing essays, checking grades, and sneaking in a game of snakes and ladders in my free time.
I was in middle school when I received my first laptop, but that’s unspoken of today. Today, almost every elementary school student (at least the ones who reside in Montgomery County) owns at least one electronic device, and multiple social media accounts. Even schools have changed their policies on cellphone use. I remember the days when we couldn’t even take out our phones during lunch, nowadays, you walk into a school and all you see are walking bodies with their head down in their phone. This doesn’t just happen with grade school kids, however. Next time you go out, take note of the number of people who are on their phone. Of the first ten people who you pass, what percentage of them is on their phone? Chances are at the very minimum, at least one of them will be.
My question is this: what happens to our level of productivity when we are constantly engaging in screenwork, particularly in the creative field? A study done by a team of researchers at the University of Michigan in 2011 revealed that children who played video games, regardless of gender or race, were more creative than those who did not. I don’t know about you, but that was quite surprising for me to read about.
How does this translate into adulthood though? Do these traits stick? Is there a point at which we lose this creativity? Based on these findings, I don’t think one could truly lose their sense of creativity. We can also conclude that with the increase in screenwork as we age, we become adept to working in a virtual environment, which translates to an increase in problem solving and creativity. Furthermore, I believe that this gives experience designers a chance to create products that will drive both creativity, and critical thinking, thereby making interfaces inadvertently educational for the whole public. As the user experience and user interface design industry grows, we can expect to see better designed games, applications, websites, etc.
The question that still remains, however, is whether these findings indicate a clear correlation between screenwork and creativity. For example, just because multiple people drank coffee before an exam, and aced the exam, does not mean that drinking coffee will result in a student passing a class. What it could mean, rather, is that caffeine may play a role in an increase in attention. What this means for us is that we still have a long way to go when it comes to researching this topic.
