People Are Afraid to Share Their Work. It’s Time we Ditch The Algorithm And Embrace Human Creativity And Connection

Sam Furness and Tina Roth Eisenberg on why we need new rituals to connect and celebrate our humanness.

With an onslaught of AI-generated content, optimized newsfeeds, and collective despair, there’s never been a more important time for sharing our human creativity.

Putting your creative ideas into the world can change your life. It increases your surface area of luck. It opens doors. It helps you find your people, and better understand others.

Research on the links between creative expression and mental health has shown its positive influence on emotional regulation, cognitive flexibility, and social connectedness.

Yet crucially, for creativity to benefit society, it has to be shared.

As two founders of global creative communities, we’ve seen how transformative it can be when people nurture their innate creativity and curiosity. In 2008, Tina started what’s now the world’s largest face-to-face gathering, CreativeMornings, spanning 250+ cities in 70 countries. And Sam runs Creative Quests, a platform where people across the world join in shared explorations and experiments.

But we’ve also noticed a concerning trend. People are more afraid to share their creative work than ever, arguably when we need human expression and connection the most.

If this crisis of creative withholding is the symptom, a diminishing of optimism is the cause. We see this reflected in Edelman’s 2026 Trust Barometer, where only 32% of people globally believe the next generation will be better off.

Being creative relies on optimism. By definition, it’s the ability to imagine something that doesn’t yet exist, and bring it into being. To do that, we have to believe a better way is possible.

And yet, it’s understandable why people feel blocked by fear and its many guises, including doubt, perfectionism, and procrastination.

Making time for our creative ideas, let alone sharing something with the world, is an increasingly daunting task. We’re bombarded by distractions, judgement and division. To share is to open ourselves to criticism.

For those who manage to summon the courage to share something online, all too often their precious work is swept up in the algorithm, disappearing sooner than initials written in sand.

Something that should be a celebration feels deeply unfulfilling and isolating. Now, instead of creating, we simply consume. And we don’t even decide what we consume—the algorithm does. With each mindless scroll, we’re further lulled into passivity, becoming further disconnected from ourselves, and others.

We don’t think it’s a coincidence that this crisis of creative withholding coincides with the epidemic of loneliness and isolation, affecting millions of Americans. The two are intertwined: creativity does not flourish in isolation; and people don’t flourish without creativity.

Being open to new experiences not only boosts creativity, but also brings us into connection with other people—which we need for a thriving democracy. As social scientist Robert Putnam’s famed “Bowling Alone” research found, American social capital has plummeted since the 1960s, evidenced by decreased civic participation, volunteering, and socializing.

The best way to reverse this trend is to bring people together—and creativity is one way to do just that. As Pete Davis says in the documentary Join Or Die based on Putnam’s research, “Community is what happens when you do what you love together.”

When we do things together, we can begin to shift from the individualism that is damaging to mental health and exacerbating loneliness, toward a more connected, cooperative and optimistic future.

This unwavering belief in a better, less lonely future is what drives the work we each do. Every day, through our virtual and in-person gatherings, we see the desire people have to overcome various blocks and bring their creative ideas to life. We just need more supportive opportunities to do so.

That’s what led Sam to create Release Day, an invitation for people around the world to share their work simultaneously on May 29.

Having spent ten years working in the music industry, Sam always loved the day an album was released. It was customary to wish somebody a “Happy Release Day,” to recognize the hard work everyone put in.

Now in its second year, Release Day extends this feeling of celebration to all types of human expression. Rather than getting lost in the algorithm, creative ideas get their moment to shine. Suddenly, what was daunting becomes exciting.

Last year, the collective deadline gave people permission to finally begin. In just a few weeks, participants moved through years of procrastination to release songs, essays, paintings, films, websites, zines, first drafts, and long-overdue projects.

While research shows that public commitments and structured deadlines produce better outcomes than private goals, the psychology of accountability is secondary to the feeling of belonging a shared moment creates.

Instead of feeling isolated and alone, with Release Day, you’re part of a community of thousands of participants who are also invested in your success, because they’re sharing and celebrating alongside you. Perhaps for the first time in someone’s life, they can feel like their creative ideas are worth sharing. Such opportunities can change people for the better, bringing more connection, resilience, and confidence.

We need to protect these avenues for optimism, because they are the very antidote to the fear, passivity, and loneliness we are witnessing. We need to create opportunities to flourish together, so we can move towards a better way of being in the world.

Optimism is not only central to our creativity, it’s contagious. When people put things into the world that light them up, it lights up everyone around them. Just like a fireworks display is made more spectacular with each spark, so is the world with each varied and dazzling contribution of human expression.