By SHEALYN PRATT
The seven-year anniversary of the global COVID-19 pandemic is approaching. COVID-19 killed over 7 million people worldwide, with more than 1.2 million deaths in the United States, according to the World Health Organization. Did the pandemic also kill creativity?
For months, the world was unusually quiet and still. Crowded hallways were left empty, movie theatres and arcades went dark and classrooms moved from desks to screens. For many, boredom was a part of the daily routine. With nowhere to go due to lockdowns and little to do because of the fear of catching the virus, people turned to the internet for entertainment, connection and eventually for inspiration.
The South China Morning Post said the earliest case was detected on Nov. 17, 2019, which would make the seven-year anniversary of the COVID-19 pandemic exactly a month from today.
The virus was officially reported in China on Dec. 31, 2019. A few weeks later on Jan. 19, 2020, a man from Wuhan, China, checked into an urgent care and was diagnosed the following day. From the emergency declaration of COVID-19 in January 2020 to the end of the declaration in May 2023, there were 7.1 million deaths in the United States.
Once this pandemic hit the United States, everything halted. Schools closed, businesses shut down, the world was on a brief pause and so was the media. Production sets emptied almost overnight. Actors, writers, directors and crew members were left waiting, unsure if they would return to work. The stories were left on inevitable cliffhangers, leaving viewers waiting impatiently. The world of film and television was just as immobilized as the rest of us.
Movies like “Top Gun: Maverick” and “The Batman” had release dates pushed back years.
“It was originally supposed to release in 2019, it was delayed once for production reasons, rescheduled for June 2020 and then delayed a half-dozen times more because of the coronavirus,” Mick LaSalle said to the San Francisco Chronicle. These movies weren’t released until 2022.
Critically acclaimed series like “The Society” on Netflix halted production with scripts already made and another season confirmed. Even after six seasons on air, the Comedy Central series “Drunk History” was cancelled. The end of such series resulted in backlash toward the production and streaming services. Despite this, it didn’t stop consumers from downloading streaming platforms. With people confined to their homes, entertainment became something that had to be accessed from beds and sofas rather than the uncomfortable movie theater seats. This may sound like a luxury but the absence of the smell of buttery popcorn and the sound of arcade games became too overwhelming to ignore. Streaming filled the silence left behind by canceled plans and closed businesses. According to Yahoo Finance, global streaming subscription revenue rose to around $50 billion dollars worldwide in 2020.
While many forms of media struggled, other forms of digital media thrived. Social media saw a boom, many news publications went digital and app stores were working overtime.
According to industry data, daily news app installs rose significantly by 53% in the U.S. between January and April 2020. Considering we were isolated, many news outlets scaled back their physical editions, shifting from daily printing to weekly runs or going completely digital to save on distribution and printing costs.
The change in media didn’t just stop at movies, television or news. Things like music and trends saw a shift like never before. TikTok Revenue and Usage Statistics reported that TikTok was downloaded approximately 850 million times globally in 2020. The platform generated 113 million downloads in February 2020 alone.
Billboard Year-End Hot 100 showed that the Top 10 Songs of 2020 were: “Blinding Lights” by The Weekend, “Circles” by Post Malone, “The Box” by Roddy Rich, “Don’t Start Now” by Dua Lipa, “DaBaby feat. Roddy Rich” by Rockstar, “Bluedface” by Lil Mosey, “Watermelon Sugar” by Harry Styles, “Say So” by Doja Cat, “Mood” by 24kGoldn featuring iann dior, and “Someone You Loved” by Lewis Capaldi. Each of these songs has a viral TikTok trend and/or dance associated with them.
Was the boredom of the adolescent generation bleeding into the charts?
Music was no longer just something you listened to on the way to work. It became something to participate in. A song could easily become a dance, meme, or a challenge overnight. Creativity was still happening, and quickly, but it was happening differently and through a screen.
Studies from the Paris Brain Institute show that having more free time is a driver of creativity. Albert Einstein is credited with the sentiment that “creativity is the residue of time wasted,” essentially that boredom sparks creativity – but what does a society do when it is bored?
Online classes and remote work forced adults and children to spend more hours staring at screens. Once classes or work ended, there were no third spaces to spend time at, and so buried your face into another digital platform.
To this day, studies from NPR say about one in four adults in the U.S. say they’re on their phones “almost constantly.”
With a social media surge during a time of intense social distancing, how did we make the shift back to the reality we once knew?
Society shifted into a post-pandemic era consisting of a greater dependence on technology, a revised outlook on health and modifications in global supply chains, according to the National Library of Medicine.
Before 2020, boredom often meant exploring worlds outside of the screen and engaging in something bigger than yourself. After 2020, boredom could be cured with the swipe of a finger and the switch from your main to your spam account. The difference may seem insignificant but the way that we consume, create and interact with media has changed dramatically.
Physical and digital media will be forever changed by COVID-19. For that, we are forever changed by it also.