Has Social Media Ruined Creativity?

With hours of endless scrolling, your feed is the only thing stopping you from having a breakthrough.

Social media might be here to stay, but is our individuality? In an age where social media algorithms decide what is trending, authentic self-expression teases fragility. Can creativity coincide with repeated online consumption, or do trends threaten our ingenuity?

The speed at which trends progress through the younger generations is especially alarming to artistic spaces.  According to the Pew Research Center, Americans are using social media at least once a day. Users are overwhelmed with fashion and lifestyle inspiration, but whether such content promotes self-expression or self-conformation is debatable.

Especially in fashion, where exterior styles attempt to mirror an interior identity, the rise and fall of clothing trends is so unprecedented that even specialized trend analysts struggle to predict the next big thing, and personal style gets limited to trend cycles.

“The internet is an interesting place to develop a personal style,” says costume designer Ruby Carter, with a BFA in performance production. “You need to be extremely cautious.” Adopting certain trends as permanent pieces into your wardrobe is not the issue. Rather, it is the cycle of purchasing an item in response to its popularity, then discarding it once the excitement dwindles. It’s an increasingly fragile cycle, where fashion pieces are easily forgotten. The time-span is too short to inspire any genuine, curated taste.

Carter also warns that fashion trends online are too fast paced to offer realistic style advice, and authentic clothing companies cannot keep up with the demand. But for those still searching for an identity in fashion, Carter admits that “looking at what’s trending is a great place to start.” She suggests you “find a silhouette that you like, find colors that you like.” From there, a wardrobe should become relatively trend-proof, because the essentials contain pieces the person actually likes. Not to mention, trendy clothes can only mean so much if their worth is temporary.

The issue is not limited to fashion. Ryan Strydom, who works as a PR specialist, ghost writer and musician, expresses the difficulty of aligning your art with an algorithm. “It’s creating conformity rather than individual creative expression,” he says. He highlights the original potential of social media, when your platform was not a curated appeal to the masses, but a space to present your authentic self and the artistic productions you labored over. Followers, theoretically, were genuinely interested in you and your art, not a cropped version of it. Now, to successfully market yourself online, you must present yourself like a product and meet specific criteria to gain attention; not an attractive choice for artists who want popularity without sacrificing authenticity.

For creatives who find themselves bored with the monotony of algorithm-centric marketing techniques, Strydom suggests that true connection urges people to “not rely so much on online community but rely more on offline community.” Social media engagement may initially prompt more revenue, but Strydom places significant value on in-person connections. These scenes are more than capable of prospering outside the confines of an algorithm.

Not everyone perceives social media as a threat to creativity, however. Graphic designer, Doug Van Pelt, is well-versed in social media dynamics and its advancements over time. As a founder of Heaven’s Metal Magazine in 1985 to his current career as a graphic designer for the Texas Department of Licensing and Registration, Van Pelt perceives social media as “an extension of creativity … it’s another canvas to paint on.” Van Pelt does not demonize trends and algorithms; rather, he sees them as a tool to generate income and an audience. For him, it’s just another vessel of self-expression, and the concept of conforming oneself to popular trends is not new. “You’ve got those pressures built in,” he goes on. “You’re trying to get results. You’re trying to sell.”

This particular perspective, however, does not touch on the effects of consuming an algorithm intended at appeasing the majority. The media you upload may not hinder your creativity, but that which you consume may. Nonetheless, if we combine the experiences of artists like Carter, Strydom, and Van Pelt, we may better learn how to balance social media with our own creative capacities.

So the next time you decide to experiment with your wardrobe or market yourself online, acknowledge the ephemeral nature of trends, and contrarily the deeper nature of human connection and authenticity. It is simply a matter of determining what you like, and not necessarily what your favorite influencer likes. As long as people remain unafraid to step outside an algorithm and its trends, creativity is not lost.

Header Image by Ella Malczyk