The generation born between 1980-2000, known as the Millennial generation, is often claimed to be uncreative due to a reliance on technology. Millennials were born just as technology was becoming more accessible to people everywhere, and because they adapted to better suit the technological world, generation X has claimed all their faults are because of that technology.

The millennial generation is constantly slammed with the complaint that they are uncreative simply because they had google to constantly guide their steps with "how-to" and "step by step" articles.

I am a millennial, and my creativity was not stunted by google, but by the k-12 public school system. From classes like art and music, to English and Math I was granted no option but to do and say exactly as the teacher said or be wrong. I remember, in elementary school, constantly being given a writing prompt that stated: "You are given a box. You open the box. What do you find? What do you do with it?" and me being the wildly creative child I was, wrote about finding a whole new dimension in the box, and exploring its wonders. Needless to say, that sweet writing of mine was shot straight out of the sky because obviously, I needed to find some obscure physical object in that box and build myself a nice house with it. In that box, now I find nothing but air, and I breathe it in. Plain and simple.

Very similar things seemed to happen in art class as well, I got told to draw flowers, but not just any flowers, I had to draw the flowers sitting in the table, the flowers that every single kid was trying so hard to imitate with shaky, excited hands and purple and green paint. Every kid wanted so badly to draw a different kind of flower, and maybe make the flowers blue, but how dare them if they tried such a thing. Their papers would end up with a low grade or on occasion in the trash.

And you mean to tell me that I am uncreative because I use google to help me better make something sometimes?

I am uncreative because as a child, I was forced to do everything in one way, and one way alone. I was always given a prompt. If I tried to do anything unique, my grades started to plummet and brought the fear of failure into that nagging corner of my brain that tells me that diverse thinking brings no good.