When the Old Becomes the New: How COVID-19 Changed Potentially Creative Action on Facebook

Abstract

Psychology usually treats the creative act as both novel and adapted, a definition that can embrace the social and the cultural features of creativity. Allied to the need for social bonding and the promise of self-realization, available technological resources have enabled valuable social networks. However, social isolation caused by the COVID-19 crisis has reduced outdoor and collective personal experiences usually shared on Facebook, encouraging some users to re-publish past events. Considering that posting is potentially a creative act, hence both new and adapted, may this action now equally become old and adapted? To illustrate the question, a set of 293 posts made by twelve Brazilians with mean age of 49.7 years (SD 7.34) were collected from May 25th to June 8th, 51 of them being re-posts. The authors were inter-viewed about their use of Facebook, relation to others, and first re-posts published in the period. Thematic dialogical analysis was applied to the content of the interviews and led to finding new meanings about old posts. Despite a small sample (n = 12) and the fact that 56.1% of Facebook users in Brazil are under 35 years old, the analysis of the phenomenon can shed new light on problematization of the notion of creativity by reflecting on its role in regulation of human emotions during the COVID-19 crisis, through the action of posting legacy experience on Facebook.