I'd say that the best way to spark creativity is if "doing nothing" is directed, or that there are available activities to do.
I've spent a lot of my childhood isolated with not much to do, and the best periods where when there was something that I could do that didn't involve spacing out or reading the same books over and over again. Like when there was a guitar or a piano available and I was able to start learning on my own.
But you don't have to do nothing to be creative. Not even with children.
Learning helps creativity. So does doing low-attention sorts of things. For example, going on a quiet walk or cleaning house. And seriously, going on a walk is a good habit for kids to have. Anything that might make a kid curious is also something that helps with creativity.
Additionally, an adult simply asking curiosity-invoking questions aloud helps develop those sorts of thoughts. Same thing for explaining why you do whatever hobby you do. If you don't have an offline hobby, start one just to be the good example.
I think "let kids think for themselves" and "encourage good/discourage bad behavior" are correlated in a way that is opposite what you implied: being able to come to your own conclusions means that whatever behaviors you end up practicing (in a healthy environment, good ones, encouraged by parents/others) are your own choices, rather than things you'll slavishly repeat for fear of punishment/desire for praise later on in your life.
Tl;dr parents can encourage/punish their kids and let them think for themselves. This is healthy and good.
Also, to loop back to the larger discussion, using screens definitely doesn't discourage bullying behavior. For evidence I present . . . the internet, give or take.
What I got from the article was that this is the wrong question to ask. Even if there are "right things" to be thinking, always feeding children the "right things" means they don't learn to deal with anything else.
> Of course, it’s not really the boredom itself that’s important; it’s what we do with it. When you reach your breaking point, boredom teaches you to respond constructively, to make something happen for yourself. But unless we are faced with a steady diet of stultifying boredom, we never learn how.
