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Adults Are Actually More Creative Than Kids—This Is What’s Holding You Back
There's a popular belief that, somewhere between childhood and adulthood, we trade in our imagination for spreadsheets and routines. We think of kids, with all of their childlike wonder, as the real creative geniuses.
But a new study1 suggests that assumption isn't quite right. Adults don't lose their creative edge, but their confidence to use it.
What the study found
Researchers compared the creative thinking of 92 preschoolers and 70 adults by having them complete tasks that measured both objective creativity (how novel and effective their ideas actually were) and self-reported creative confidence, motivation, and enjoyment.
Adults outperformed kids on the actual creative output, generating ideas that were more original and more useful. But the preschoolers outpaced the adults when it came to confidence. The young children rated their own creativity higher, enjoyed the tasks more, and felt more motivated to keep going, regardless of how "good" their ideas actually were.
In other words, the kids weren't actually coming up with more ideas. They were just more comfortable with the idea of being creative, even when the result isn't objectively impressive.
Why adults hold back
If adults are capable of producing more novel and effective ideas, why do so many of us feel creatively stuck? The answer likely has less to do with ability and more to do with self-censorship.
As we age, we accumulate a fear of judgment, perfectionism, and the instinct to edit an idea before it's even fully formed. A 4-year-old doodling a purple elephant with wings doesn't pause to wonder if it's "good enough," whereas an adult sketching the same idea might talk themselves out of it before pencil hits paper.
Creative capacity doesn't disappear as you age—the study suggests adults are actually better equipped to generate strong ideas. Adults' creativity is just stunted by layers of self-consciousness that kids simply haven't developed yet. This means you haven't lost your creativity, but rather the low-stakes playfulness that let it show up freely.
How to rebuild creative confidence as an adult
If you want to regain some of that childlike creativity you once had, there are ways to train your brain to be less judgmental of your work. Here are some ways to begin reconnecting with your artistic side:
- Lower the stakes: Give yourself permission to make something "bad." Doodle, freewrite, or brainstorm with no audience and no pressure to produce a finished product.
- Schedule unstructured play: Block time with no agenda, no goal, no deadline, no deliverable. Kids don't schedule creativity. They stumble into it because they have open, unstructured time.
- Separate generating from judging: When brainstorming, resist the urge to evaluate ideas as they come. Get everything out first, then go back and edit. Judging too early kills momentum before it starts.
- Revisit what you loved as a kid: Give painting, building, storytelling, music, whatever lit you up before you learned, another change, without worrying about being "good" at it. Returning to that activity, even imperfectly, can help rebuild the muscle.
The takeaway
Creativity isn't a resource that drains with age. It's more like a muscle that gets less use as self-judgment creeps in.
But muscles respond to practice. If you give yourself permission to play and make something imperfect, you may find yourself enjoying the creative process in a way you did before you knew to be embarrassed.