Creativity and Smartphone Use: Three Correlational Studies

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 three correlational focused on divergent thinking, the mindful ability to generate creative responses open-ended problems. Most of 48,000 participants surveyed thought reduced creativity. This view was consistent with negative correlations we found between thinking both screen time problematic (rs=−.27 −.35) in an exploratory sample 62 university students. However, two pre-registered replications larger more diverse samples (N = 294 16,932), at most tiny measures or achievement several types (rs=−.09 .09). Thus, link creativity may be weaker nuanced than is commonly believed.