Are we still bored?
There have already been so many great submissions to this months topic on boredom, and this my own post on the topic.
The concept of boredom has been covered more widely in newspapers and magazines in recent years, as something valuable we as a society might have lost. Very different from growing up where being bored was mostly seen as a negative, and your parents will often say something akin to "smart kids are never bored" if you complained about having nothing to do. Now that everyone can fill in every few seconds while we are waiting for something with entertainment from our smartphones, some say being bored has been eradicated and that might not be a good thing.
I don't think the research is conclusive on this yet though, though we can reflect on whether there is some value in the space between things, where the mind is allowed to just wander. Let us not kid ourselves, that we before smartphones were somehow super-productive with our time or that being bored created room for some greater enlightenment. There may be some truth in that you often get good ideas if you are bored. Especially as a kid, when your parents turn off the TV or the iPad, that may be when the most creative ideas for play will spur.
While I can certainly attest to that mindlessly scrolling on your phone for hours on end, is not really something you can put much positive spin on, but we also wasted time before smartphones. I didn't have a screen time counter on my computer before I got my first smartphone, but I am certain it will have been pretty high. I am sure I can paint a rose tinted nostalgic picture of that time spent with gaming, chatting on IRC or learning Linux, but a lot of the time was also just spent mindlessly clicking around sites hoping for something exciting to appear. Not far from how I might use my phone today when I am feeling restless, just browsing through the apps, opening and refreshing stuff in the vain hope that there will be something worthwhile.
Because that is the thing, we are still bored plenty in this day and age in my opinion. The way most people describe how they feel about doomscrolling for example, it seems similar to boredom. Few people at least will label it as outright entertaining and rarely something you wish you spent more time on. I don't think boredom is becoming extinct, but I do think it is healthy to sometime reflect on what we tend to fill waiting time with. Waiting for the water to boil for your coffee isn't a boring 30 seconds that necessarily needs to be filled with something else.