Protect Your Child’s Creativity Before It’s Too Late

Discover how to protect your child's creativity from fading as they grow. Learn the surprising statistics on creativity decline and how play-based learning with School of Gaming can help keep the spark alive for future generations.

Don’t Let Your Child’s Creativity Fade - Here’s How to Keep It Thriving

A thought-provoking LinkedIn post by Manuel Kistner sheds light on a surprising statistic: creativity significantly declines as we age. A NASA study suggests that while young children have creativity levels nearing 100%, by the time we reach 30, this number plummets to just 2%. This decline raises a crucial question: how can we preserve creativity throughout life?

The Decline in Creativity Over Time

The NASA research, conducted by Dr. George Land and Beth Jarman already back in the 1960s, measured creativity in children and adults using a test designed to assess problem-solving skills for space exploration. Here’s what they discovered:

Ages 4-5: Nearly 100% of children scored as "creative geniuses."

Age 10: Only 30% retained this level of creativity.

Age 15: Creativity dropped further to 12%.

Adults (average age 31): A mere 2% maintained high creativity levels.

This decline is often attributed to the way traditional education systems and societal expectations prioritize conformity over original thinking. As children grow, they are taught to focus on the "right" answers, leaving less room for experimentation and imaginative problem-solving.

Why Play Matters in Sustaining Creativity

Play is a natural driver of creativity. It encourages imagination, experimentation, and exploration, allowing children to approach problems with fresh perspectives. As kids grow, opportunities for unstructured play often give way to structured activities, which can limit their ability to think creatively.

At School of Gaming, we believe that play is essential, and not just for fun, but for personal growth, creativity and problem-solving. Through activities like storytelling in Minecraft, creative building, and collaborative tasks, we create spaces where creativity thrives.

How School of Gaming Supports Creativity

Our approach integrates play and learning in ways that inspire kids to think differently:

Storytelling in Minecraft: Kids craft their own worlds, stories and adventures, developing storytelling skills and creative thinking along the way.

Game Design and Creative Building: Gamers create their own games, building projects and events inside Minecraft. All of which have a purpose and meaning for our whole online community of gamers. This way they learn how to solve problems together, listening to each other and turn ideas into reality while also understanding the concept of common good.

Tackling Real-Life Challenges in Minecraft: In our Minecraft worlds our gamers face challenges which sometimes have a link to real world problems. Children come up with solutions to these problems we never would have thought of. Our structured but flexible environments and playful learning methods teach strategic thinking and encourage collaboration and communication.

Our trained game educators ensure that every session is engaging, supportive, and full of opportunities for kids to express themselves creatively.

Keeping Creativity Alive at Every Age

Creativity isn’t just for kids. Adults can rediscover their creative spark by reconnecting with activities they enjoyed in childhood, like drawing, building, or imaginative play. Here are some ways to nurture creativity for yourself and your child:

Encourage unstructured play: Let kids explore their interests without strict rules or expectations.

Value creativity in everyday activities: Turn routine tasks into opportunities for problem-solving and imagination.

Reconnect with your creative roots: Find time to revisit hobbies or interests you loved as a child.

Play with children: Too tired? No time? Too much work? That’s a sure way to grow old fast. Find your inner child and go out there and play with your own kids, nephews, nieces or kids from your neighborhood. But remember that you are just one of the kids, not a rule obsessed adult!

At School of Gaming, we’re passionate about keeping the spirit of creativity alive. Whatever we do online in Minecraft, we try to turn into an offline play which can continue when the screens are switched off.

Whether it’s through a Minecraft adventure or some other online game, every session is a chance to nurture the skills that help children (and adults) approach life with curiosity and originality.

What creative activity did you enjoy as a child? Maybe it’s time to try it again. Let’s keep creativity alive, for ourselves and for future generations!