I’ve noticed something strange lately. Creative tools are more accessible than ever, yet creative diversity feels lower than ever. It seems that much of what I see online today follows trends of things other people are doing, and it made me realize, people aren’t trying to be creative anymore because they’re too afraid of being bad at it.
Ironically, writing this column took me forever because I was afraid I wasn’t knowledgeable enough to write an opinion piece. It feels like somewhere along the way in our journey of the digital age we’ve lost the ability to be creative because we’re too worried it won’t be as good as everyone else’s work.
On social media, we see nothing but non-stop perfection, artists post only their best work, influencers show their best side, photographers upload only their sharpest shots. And we start connecting that perfection to the likes, views and validation they get.
Entire accounts exist just to copy other people’s videos and visions just because they know that it will get views. It’s safer to repeat what works than risk the idea of failure in creating something new. This pressure created by the illusion of perfection on social media discourages people from being creative and making something they’re proud of because they are too afraid it won’t be as good as their favorite influencer.
And the addition of AI in the mix makes it even easier to avoid failure. In college especially, students are too afraid of doing their work incorrectly, or not maintaining that A they’ve always had, so they turn to AI to help them be perfect.
There is no chance any of us will ever get better at being creative without starting something new that we aren’t perfect at. Every influencer, every creator and every professional had to start somewhere. If all we do is turn to AI to make something “perfect” or outright not attempt to be creative to begin with instead of learning something new, we’ll never actually grow. Creativity itself could fade away.
A user on X said, “I want AI to do my laundry and dishes so that I can do art and writing, not for AI to do my art and writing so that I can do my laundry and dishes.”
And I think that they’re on to something. We as humans should be the ones creating. If we let AI do all our creative work because it needs to be “perfect,” human creativity could die out altogether.
We as a human race are stuck in this infinite loop of wanting to be creative, but needing to be perfect. But that perfection will never come if we never try in the first place.