How Consumer Culture has Weakened our Creativity
When was the last time you remember saying, “I’m bored”?
If you’re at all similar to me, it was in middle school when I waited for my friends to play me back in Angry Birds. Back then, boredom was a catalyst. We built forts, drew comics, and made up games. Now, one tap on a screen fills every quiet moment. We rarely sit with the stillness that once sparked imagination.
I’m sure you are not naive to the current state of the world. We live in a digital age that has evolved exponentially and is transforming society. We tend to instinctively rush through anything that does not feel instantly meaningful. The second a moment feels slow, we distract ourselves, a majority of the time with our phones.
What if the endless stream of content we consume is not only numbing us to boredom, but also eroding our ability to create? We say we’re too busy, always moving, yet our screen time tells a different story. Hours lost in consumption, not creation.
Many treat creativity like a trait, something you either have or you don’t. But in reality, creativity is a muscle. And like any muscle, it weakens without use.
Think about it: when was the last time you truly sat in stillness? No phone. No notifications. No background noise. Just you and your own thoughts?
For most of us, that kind of silence feels unnatural – even uncomfortable. But historically, that discomfort is exactly what fueled some of the most imaginative ideas.
On a recent trip across Europe, I noticed this on the metro: almost everyone was scrolling on their phones. The number of people lost in their screens far outweighed those simply sitting and thinking. And it didn’t take more than a glance to see they weren’t reading articles or engaging deeply – they were caught in the endless doom scroll of Instagram Reels and TikTok.
But that scroll isn’t passive. It’s carefully designed to create a constant hunger for more content, more trends, more things to buy. We’re fed a stream of curated lives, soft launches, aesthetic routines, and “must-haves” that subtly teach us that what we have, and who we are, is never quite enough.
This is the heart of consumer culture: a cycle of dissatisfaction that keeps us wanting, clicking, and spending. And somewhere along the way, we stop creating from a place of curiosity or inspiration and start creating only what we think will perform, impress, or sell.
And with that being the norm, we lose something essential: the messy, soul-stirring parts of creativity that don’t exist to impress, but to connect with ourselves, and with others.
But what would happen if we gave ourselves a little room again?
What might surface if we let ourselves be bored?
Give yourself grace, knowing that we will all fall short on this daily. You are creative. You are innovative. Your life has meaning even if you haven't figured it all out.
When we stop chasing something “more” and settle into the rhythm of the ordinary day, we will find the joy of creating ourselves again. It's a freeing feeling, thinking for yourself. My hope for our generation is that we start to eagerly chase that feeling once again, flipping the narrative, waking up our minds.
