As a child, I could turn a cardboard box into a spaceship, castle or secret hideout. Now, I watch as high school students ask ChatGPT to write their essays, do their math homework or even just brainstorm project ideas. Have we really come so far in technology, only to lose the creativity and critical thinking that once set us apart from each other? This very introduction was written by ChatGPT.
As I sat down to write this article, I was struck by my lack of motivation to find a creative way to address this problem. I have noticed this pattern among my classmates who use artificial intelligence (AI) for almost anything. Some even use it to create affectionate items, such as birthday cards. Our unwillingness to think outside the box is deteriorating more and more as we continue to utilize AI as an alternative to coming up with our own ideas. This rise in AI is ultimately ruining our creativity and critical thinking ability, and we should all reduce our dependence on AI tools.
The overall use of AI has grown within the Redwood community. 29 percent of students use ChatGPT once a day for general inquiries, and over 75 percent use it at least sometimes to brainstorm ideas for school, according to the March 2025 Bark survey. These numbers suggest that as the use of AI increases, so does the lack of original thought. Similarly, on a broader scale, a Pew Research survey found that “among teens who have heard of ChatGPT, 19 percent have used it to help them with schoolwork.” Within this group, 69 percent believed it was acceptable to use AI, 39 percent believed it acceptable to use it to solve math problems and 20 percent said it was acceptable to use it to write essays. As AI becomes more integrated within academic environments, many students’ critical thinking skills deteriorate, creating a form of reliance on AI websites.
As the number of students who use AI to develop new ideas continues to rise, the concern surrounding AI seems to increase as well. In another Pew Research study, 52 percent of Americans said that they felt more concerned about the overuse of AI. A similar trend has been seen in schools, with a third of high school teachers reporting that AI tools do more harm than good, as found in another Pew Research study.
In a Virginia Tech College of Engineering article, faculty members shared their opinions on the impact of AI.
“There is a potential risk of diminishing critical thinking skills if users depend too heavily on AI-generated content without scrutiny. Also, as these models are trained on vast amounts of internet text, they might unknowingly propagate biases present in their training data,” Eugenia Rho, Assistant Professor, Department of Computer Science Virginia Tech said.
Not only do critical thinking skills suffer with the use of AI, but so do creative abilities. In a research conducted by Sabrina Habib, associate professor in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of South Carolina, she observed the effect of AI on student creativity.
“The downside of brainstorming with AI was that some students voiced concerns about overreliance on the technology, fearing it might undermine their own thoughts and, consequently, confidence in their creative abilities. Some students reported a ‘fixation of the mind,’ meaning that once they saw the AI’s ideas, they had difficulty coming up with their own,” Habib wrote.
While the use of AI could enhance creative thinking, the over-reliance on websites such as ChatGPT can actually limit our ability of original thought. Habib found through her research that AI is often repetitive due to it recycling content instead of creating original content. Overdependence on these websites will eventually make our thinking repetitive, presenting the risk of losing the confidence to create independently. As students especially begin to lose confidence in their creative abilities, they will eventually struggle to approach challenges on their own and lose certain problem-solving skills.
It is critical that as a society we continue to exercise our ability to create as it is one of our most unique abilities that can set us apart from one another — and that set us apart from AI and websites such as ChatGPT. It is vital to find a balance between using AI as an assistance and attempting to think for ourselves. We need to make an effort and challenge ourselves to create originally first before asking for the help of AI.
