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How our creativity was stolen

Close Reading Poetry · Close Reading Poetry · · 17 min read
Commentary by Brian Edwards

How Our Creativity Was Stolen", "author": "Close Reading Poetry", "output": "<p>We've all heard complaints that good writing isn't being produced anymore. Booksellers and libraries worldwide have long been flooded with what modern readers call "slop" — mediocre content that drowns out quality literature. But a deeper problem persists: even if great writing were easier to find, we lack the capacity to engage with it or create it ourselves.</p><p>Several studies now confirm what many feared: smartphone addiction is devastating our creative abilities. Passive consumption of short-form content weakens critical thinking and shrinks attention spans. Research from 2025 demonstrates that smartphone addiction doesn't just cause depression and anxiety — it actively destroys creativity. Fewer people can think creatively or maintain a deep imaginative life.</p><h2>The Digital Threat</h2><p>Vertical short-form video emerged with TikTok's global expansion in 2017. The platform now boasts nearly two billion users worldwide, alongside similar formats on Facebook, Instagram, and Substack. This content is so new that researchers can't fully assess its long-term cognitive effects — but existing data suggests those effects are far worse than predicted.</p><p>Two 2025 studies examining college students revealed smartphone addiction impairs creativity, defined as the ability to generate ideas that are both novel and useful. Short-form video content decreases creativity through two mechanisms: collateral symptoms of depression and executive dysfunction, plus direct neurological damage — including atrophy of the prefrontal cortex and dopamine system imbalance.</p><p>"Poetry shapes your consciousness," the author argues. "The you that emerges from reading poetry is fundamentally different from who you were before. Poetry shapes your ability to think. Your brain constantly picks up cues from how you consume content." With short-form video, users are training their brains to make connections that don't logically follow — fragments of digital reality disconnected from any narrative thread.</p><h2>Literature's True Power</h2><p>The author contends this creative decline has led to reliance on artificial intelligence. YouTube channels now teach writers how to produce novels in a week using AI prompts. The assumption behind these methods? Ideas and plots matter more than language.</p><p>This is fundamentally mistaken. Literature is about language, not ideas. Philosophy deals with ideas; literature centers on language. The enduring power of great works comes from the words themselves — not the stories they tell.</p><blockquote>People and machines generate ideas by the thousands. It's really about making your reader or facilitating an experience for the reader. That's where the thinking happens when you wrestle with the angel of language and not let it get away until it blesses you.</blockquote><p>Shakespeare's plays survived not because his plots were original — most were borrowed from older stories — but because of his language. Romeo and Juliet wasn't an innovative plot. What made Shakespeare immortal was his speeches, his wordplay, his mastery of language itself.</p><h2>The Vicious Cycle</h2><p>This cycle compounds itself. Smartphone addiction dulls creativity. Unable to access imagination, writers turn to AI. This creates two concerning trends: creativity is now seen as merely a means to an end rather than a transformative process, and AI-generated style has flattened human language into something homogeneous and formulaic.</p><p>Critics might note that this analysis oversimplifies the causes of creative decline — attributing it solely to digital technology ignores other factors like economic pressure, education failures, and broader cultural shifts. The framing also tends toward moralistic hand-wringing rather than empirical investigation.</p><h2>Reclaiming Creativity</h2><p>The author proposes two concrete paths forward:</p><p><strong>Study the archetypes.</strong> Learn to see repeating patterns in literature and media. The major arcana of the tarot represent 22 aspects of human consciousness — the Fool, the Hermit, the Magician. Rather than asking AI for story direction, creatives can meditate on these archetypes as prompts for deeper thinking.</p><p><strong>Immerse in ancient scriptures and literature.</strong> Read imaginative works that awaken consciousness and elevate perspective above the mundane. When asked where he got his ideas, novelist Tom Wolfe reportedly cited the King James Bible. For writers block, reading the Book of Ruth — a narrative masterpiece in under an hour — offers better stimulation than any AI prompt.</p><h2>The Path Forward</h2><p>Our inner world grows diminished as we surrender consciousness to digital stimulation. The digital world promises escape from an unjust, chaotic world but returns nothing meaningful. To change the world, we must reject these false promises and free ourselves through dispossession — confronting the real challenges of our times.</p>## Bottom Line

The strongest argument here is empirical: smartphone addiction measurably damages creativity, backed by recent studies. The weakest point is the proposed solution — suggesting archetypes and ancient texts as remedies feels more like spiritual prescription than actionable advice. The piece's greatest value lies in identifying how literature's power comes from language rather than plot, a distinction many writers overlook when outsourcing their creative work to AI.}

Transcript excerpt on Close Reading Poetry

Many people complain that good writing is just not being produced today. And by this point, there are probably several YouTube videos that mention this. But what many miss often because of their own political agendas, is that for most of history, any time after the invention of the printing press, most bookshops and libraries around the world were filled with, to use a modern term, slop. It's often the sieve of time that filters the ephemera from the the great works of literature that endure.

Great literature is indeed still being written today, but these works are increasingly difficult to find in a world where the markets are flooded with poor literature. But honestly, oversaturation is only part of the problem. Because even if great writing were easier to find, there's still the more fundamental obstacle that's confronting us. And that is our diminished capacity to engage with and to even create great literature.

Several studies have shown the negative effects of the smartphone upon our critical thinking, particularly smartphone addiction. It's almost common place now that passive consumption of short form content in particular infeebles our ability to think critically. It weakens our attention spans. It causes depression and anxiety.

All of this has already been proven by several studies. But as if these weren't concerning enough, several more recent studies, specifically those coming from 2025, last year, have suggested that phone addiction, smartphone addiction, is leading to a loss of creativity. Fewer and fewer people are able to think creatively or to maintain a deep imaginative life. And in this video, I'll talk about how human creativity is uniquely compromised at this moment.

My goal isn't just to lament. I want to persuade you that creativity is recoverable. The imagination is a faculty that can be exercised. And to anyone who feels trapped or addicted to their smartphones and short form content and would like to strengthen their creativity, my message to you is that there is hope.

So, let me begin by talking about how digital addiction is weakening creativity. First, let's talk about the data. The forms of entertainment that are eroding our creativity are relatively new. And this presents a problem.

I mean, it's it's almost brand new. The vertical short form video that that made uh Tik Tok so popular. Tik Tok spread like wildfire when it hit the international market in 2017. ...

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