With access to social media at our fingertips, it’s tempting for people to scroll on the internet looking for life inspiration. Whether it be ideas for artwork, clothing or even home decor, it only takes a few clicks to see how someone else is living their life. Although social media can be a great source of inspiration for anyone lost, it can hinder personal creativity and make one too reliant on others ideas.
Social media consists of several trends that impressionable viewers tend to follow. For example, people’s bedrooms should be a place where people can truly express their style. However, rather than thinking of personal ways to accessorize their own spaces, teenagers often attempt to replicate the bedrooms they see online by copying popular color schemes and decorations. Trying to morph into someone else’s style can put you in a box and limit your ability to use your own imagination.
“When I was in middle school, I spent the majority of my time trying to make my room as simple and bland as possible to fit the ‘aesthetic’ trend online,” WHS student Sophie Murray said.
Not only does social media limit your ability to form your own ideas, but it also affects your self expression. Discovering yourself and finding ways to decorate your space is very personal and authentic, yet social media can lead people to lose that train of thought. Rather than discovering and focusing on themselves, social media users are constantly being fed content from others and can lose sight of who they are as individuals which alters their level of creativity.
As well as reusing other’s lifestyle ideas, social media can lead to a constant state of comparison. Seeing other people succeeding online can form self doubts and can cause someone to try to replicate the work of others. For example, some artists will try to recreate another person’s art style which is inauthentic to themselves as it does not use their own creativity to form the art piece.
Another downside of having social media so easily accessible is the lack of boredom people encounter. Nowadays, when people get bored they can simply scroll for hours to distract themselves from their boredom. Using social media so comfortably and often doesn’t leave much room for the mind to wander. Boredom is a key factor for innovating new ideas and concepts, and without it, creativity is put to a halt.
It is common to come across similar content while scrolling online, and this is because of algorithms used to lure people in. Phones have the ability to track the content you interact with and recycle it to show you the same content in a different form. Social media algorithms simply show you what you like to see, making it difficult for you to form differing ideas.
“I feel like everyone needs to take time off from their phones and really explore who they are and what their mind is capable of creating on their own,” WHS student Rebecca Schmidt said.
