Creativity and Smartphone Use: Three Correlational Studies

Abstract

Various books and popular media outlets claim that mindless smartphone use can impair creativity, yet few studies have tested this idea. We conducted a survey and three correlational studies focused on divergent thinking, the mindful ability to generate creative responses to open-ended problems. Most of the 48, 000 participants surveyed thought that smartphone use reduced creativity. This view was consistent with the negative correlations we found between divergent thinking and both screen time and problematic smartphone use (rs = −.27 to −.35) in an exploratory sample of 62 university students. However, in two pre-registered replications with larger and more diverse samples (N = 294 and 16, 932), we found at most tiny correlations between measures of divergent thinking or creative achievement and several types of smartphone use (rs = −.09 to .09). Thus, the link between smartphone use and creativity may be weaker or more nuanced than is commonly believed.

The relationship between mobile phone use and creative ideation among college students: The roles of critical thinking and creative self-efficacy.

“…However, when people use mobile phones to design interactions and share information, they may generate positive new ideas that enhance creativity (Marty-Dugas et al, 2018). The findings suggest a weak correlation between mobile phone use and creative ideation, which is in line with the results of a previous study (Olson et al, 2023). The findings also suggest that mobile phone use does not necessarily have negative effects.…”

“…Whereas some researches have shown no correlation between smartphone addiction and creative achievement (Upshaw et al, 2022) or divergent and convergent thinking (Linares & Sellier, 2021; Olson et al, 2023; Rodríguez et al, 2020), other studies have demonstrated that the use of smartphones correlates positively with mind-wandering (Marty-Dugas et al, 2018; Müller et al, 2021), which is considered a correlate of creativity (Agnoli et al, 2018). These findings suggest that the relationship between mobile phone use and creative ideation remains to be fully elucidated.…”

Sex, Age, and Smartphone Addiction Across 41 Countries

“…One third of the sample was analysed to test an unrelated hypothesis (cf. Study 3 inOlson, Sandra, Langer, et al, 2022).…”

Smartphone Distraction: Italian Validation of the Smartphone Distraction Scale (SDS)

“…In the long term, smartphone overuse and compulsive use reduce concentration abilities, wellbeing and creativity [18,19]. The massive use of smartphones could affect cognitive functions and influence performance, especially in learning contexts, such as schools [20][21][22], and in the professional field [22,23].…”