Are people more or less creative in 2025?
As of late 2025 we are well over a quarter of the way through the new century already and so many aspects of our lives have changed over the past 25 years. In many ways today’s world is virtually unrecognisable compared with the turn of the century, with young people who are coming of age today having had vastly different life experiences compared to those that the previous generation had when they were young, particularly in terms of how technology and social life have developed.
In this month’s mindfulness and wellbeing updates we’ll be considering how these and other developments have influenced one of the most quintessentially human experiences of all: creative expression. We’ll be looking at some of the ways that technological and societal change has unleashed our creative potential as well as look at some of the ways that our creativity might be more hindered now.
In many ways, we now have the potential to access a much wider range of ideas and opinions than would have been the case even ten or twenty years ago. Cheap phone data and the apparently unstoppable rise of video sharing and streaming services means that we now have 24/7 access to global culture in exchange for a minimal financial outlay, and this also brings with it the potential to access ideas from people outside of our own city or country, something which would have been unreachable for many people until fairly recently.
The internet and particularly social media have also democratised culture in the sense of providing everyone with a personal platform, meaning that any of us in theory can create and publish content for a global audience. It’s also much easier to pursue niche interests and find online communities of like-minded people, so if you live in a rural area or you’re interested in a country that you don’t live in, you can still immerse yourself in hobbies and share ideas with other people.
Easy access to the internet also makes it so much easier to find answers to many of our questions. If we want to know something, we can often find the answer (or ‘an’ answer) immediately and receive additional context too. It’s hard to imagine going down the equivalent of a Wikipedia rabbit hole using books or other printed reference materials, but with an internet connection you can find information about almost anything, and this arguably helps to inspire our ideas and therefore creativity by placing so much of the world’s knowledge at our disposal.
On the other hand, we live in a world of increased distractions and literal and metaphorical background noise. We rarely feel listless or bored, which is where many of our best ideas come from. The environment we live in discourages deep thinking or really engaging with things properly, and we're constantly fed shallow, repetitive content, with most internet algorithms nudging us towards consuming content that we’re familiar with already. Meanwhile, the content that we are likely to chance upon is only the tip of the iceberg of everything created. In a world where posts with more than 130 views are actually in the top third of YouTube’s most popular content and the median video has just 41 views, according to figures quoted by the BBC, it’s hard to imagine how the majority of people’s individual contributions can reach a meaningful audience, which means that we are all potentially missing out on more interesting content than just the most-viewed viral videos.
Over and above this, we live in an era when we're constantly encouraged to surround ourselves with people with similar opinions to us and to align ourself along political and moral lines with people who share our perspectives on life, which heightens the echo chamber effect. The extreme censure of those posting poorly-received words on social media and elsewhere - even when those words came from a place of good intentions - and the fact that anything posted online is effectively permanent and can potentially have long-lasting adverse effects also means that people are arguably more likely to self-censor. All of these factors mean that we’re culturally more cautious than might have been the case in previous generations, which could go part of the way towards explaining why it sometimes feels like relatively little genuinely new culture is being created.
Looking on a more societal level, many of us in many parts of the world are lucky to be living in safer conditions than would have been the case for previous generations, but while we are fortunate to mostly not be living through crises, cost-of-living issues and other linked concerns such as stagnating wages and jobs with minimal progression opportunities mean that many people are increasingly focused on living hand-to-mouth, which is the enemy of creativity since it robs us of our sense of autonomy. This may also be part of the reason why more and more of us report feeling listless or demotivated, and in turn lacking not only the imaginative power but also the energy to be creative.
Lastly, a final challenge to creativity throughout time is the fact that there are only a finite number of new ideas and that as time progresses, more and more has been said and invented already. Even as society changes rapidly, in many ways we still pursue similar things such as love, friendship and security, meaning that everything we talk or write about will likely be reflective of the same basic experiences. This may be part of the reason why every story in the world allegedly has one of six basic plots and is a challenge that has existed before the onset of technology.
But while we’re taking the longer view of history, it’s worth being mindful of the fact that even and perhaps especially in the darkest times, humans have always created things, despite extreme material poverty, political censorship, and many other hardships. And while the tools that we use may have changed across time, history has indicated that the basic desire to create is always there, even if our methods of expression have changed.
It’s hard to imagine what creativity will look like in another twenty-five years from now but we hope that there will always be a place for original self-expression and for sharing ideas.
Do you think humans are more or less creative now? Don’t hesitate to leave your thoughts in the comments, and we’ll look forward to seeing you again for next month’s translation industry updates.
Happy creating!
Sources
BBC Future
The hidden world beneath the shadows of YouTube's algorithm
https://www.bbc.co.uk/future/article/20250306-inside-youtubes-hidden-world-of-forgotten-videos
BBC Future
Every story in the world has one of these six basic plots
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