Does technology make children less creative?

The claim that screens are producing a less imaginative generation is repeated so often that it is rarely examined. I partly agree with it, but the agreement depends entirely on how the time is spent, not on the device itself.

Where the concern is justified is in what the screen replaces. Creativity in childhood is built largely from boredom and unstructured play: the hours in which a child with nothing to do invents a game, builds something from what is lying around, or tells a story to a younger sibling. A tablet removes boredom instantly and completely. A child who reaches for a video at the first empty minute never has to invent anything, and the habit of inventing is exactly what does not develop. In that specific sense, passive consumption does displace the raw material of creativity.

The same devices, used differently, do the opposite. A ten-year-old today can compose music, edit a film, write and publish a story or design a working game with tools that a professional could not have afforded a generation ago. These are not less creative acts than drawing with crayons; they are the same acts with a wider range. The children who use screens this way are arguably more productive creatively than any previous generation, because the distance between an idea and a finished thing has never been shorter.

The difference between the two cases is not the amount of screen time but whether the child is consuming or making. That is set by the adults around them far more than by the technology.

So the statement is true of one pattern of use and false of another, and describing the effect as belonging to the devices lets the adults who decide the pattern off the hook.