New research from the University of Washington Information School and Harvard University, followed 20 years of student creative writing and visual artworks and finds that the dynamics of creativity are changing.

They wanted to find out if creativity was in decline and found instead that some aspects of creativity — such as visual arts — have been rising over the years, while other aspects, such as creative writing, could be declining. 

Katie Davis, UW assistant professor, and fellow researchers studied 354 examples of visual art and 50 examples of creative writing by teenagers published between 1990 and 2011. The question they pursued, Davis said, was "How have the style, content and form of adolescents' art-making and creative writing changed over the last 20 years?"

The artwork came from a monthly magazine for teens, the writing from a similar annual publication featuring student fiction. The researchers analyzed and coded the works, blind as to year, looking for trends over that time.

The review of student visual art showed an increase in the sophistication and complexity both in the designs and the subject matter over the years. The pieces, Davis said, seemed "more finished, and fuller, with backgrounds more fully rendered, suggesting greater complexity." Standard pen-and-ink illustrations grew less common over the period studied, while a broader range of mixed media work was represented.

Conversely, the review of student writing showed the young authors adhering more to "conventional writing practices" and a trend toward less play with genre, more mundane narratives and simpler language over the two decades studied.

Still, Davis said, it's too simple to just say creativity increased in one area and decreased in another over the years.

"There really isn't a standard set of agreed-upon criteria to measure something as complex and subjective as creativity," she said. "But there are markers of creativity — like complexity and risk-taking and breaking away from the standard mold — that appear to have changed."

The researchers also note that the period of study was a time of great innovation in digital art, with new tools for creative production and boundless examples of fine art a mere click or two away, serving to inform and inspire the students in their own work.

Davis said that while previous research has typically studied creativity in a lab setting, this work examined student creative work in a more "naturalistic" setting, where it is found in everyday life.

She added that with data from such a naturalistic setting, researchers cede a degree of control over the characteristics of the sample being studied, and the findings cannot safely be generalized to all American youth.

"It remains an open question as to whether the entire U.S. has seen a decline in literary creativity and a parallel increase in visual creativity among its youth over the last 20 years," Davis said. "Because society — indeed any society — depends on the creativity of its citizens to flourish, this is a question that warrants serious attention in future creativity research."