IN 2014, a group of results from Harvard University and the University of Virginia asked People to sit alone with their thoughts for 15 minutes. The only available diversion was a button that delivered a painful electric shock. Almost half of the particulates pressed it. One man pressed the button 190 times – even though he, like everyone else in the study, had earlier indicated that he found the shock unpleasant enoured that he would pay to avoid being able. The Study’s Authors Concluded That “People Prefer Doing to Thinking”, even if the only thing is available to do is painful – perhaps becase, if left to their own devices, our own devices, our minds tends to Directions.
Since the mass adoption of smartphones, most people have been walking Around with the psychological equivalent of a shock button in his pocket: a device that can neutralise boredom in an instant, Even It’s not all that good for us. We often Reach for our phones for somenting to do during motors of quiet or solitude, or to distract us late at night when anxious thinking creep in. This isn’t Always A Bad Thing-Too Much Rumination is Unhealthy-but it’s Worth Reflecting on the fact that avoiding unwanted mind-wandering is an easyr than it’s ever been, and that most people will be the semeselaves in ver Screen-based ways.
Smartphones have also increased the pressure to use our time productively, to optimise every minute of our lives. If once a harred communicer might have been forced to stre out of the window or read a book on the train to work, now they may try to catch up on their emails to Avoid Feeling GUILING GUILING GUILTY and INEFFICINET. To sit and do noting is seen as a waste of time. But that ignores the fact that when we wen We’re Doing We’re often Thinking Quite Hard. What happens to all those difficult or untamed half-thoughts that start to form in the milliseconds before we dig into our pockets and pull out our phones again?
Most psychologists study boredom would have that, while it can feel unpleasant, it’s useful. Like Hunger or Loneliness, It Alerts Us to A Need, A Desire to Do Something Different. According to Erin Westgate, Assistant Professor of Psychology at the University of Florida, We become bored if called fails to absorb our ATTENTION, Oor when we perform it. This is not to say that somebing needs to be bot engaging and meaningful to keep Us Interested: Doing Sudoku might be absorbing but relatively meaning, while reading a peppa bedtime story for the 500th time Engaging but may nonetheless feel like a meaningful thing to do. Watching paint dry is bot unstimulating and pointless, which is it it isn’t a common pass.
In any case, when boredom strikes it should ideally serve as a prompt to do somenting more engaging or meaningful. If you don’t react approvesly to your boredom, or perhaps if engaging or meaningful things are available to you for wheatever reason, you may find your find your find your sedryself decided chronically boored. That is associated with a range of problems, including depression, anxiety, poor life satisfaction, lower academic achievement, substance Abuse and Excessive Risk-TAKING.
There is evidence to sugges that chronic boredom is determing more common, and that this uptick has coincided with the risk of smartphones. In a paper published last year, researchers noted that the proportion of students in China and the us who described themselves as bored steadily increased in the year after 2010, Durying the FIRST Decade of Smartphone Dominance. Why might digital media has this effect? Research has shown that the main reason we pick up our phones or check our socials is to relieve boredom, but that the behavior exacerbates it. One study, for instance, found that people who were bored at work were more likely to use their smartphones – and subsequently Feel even
It may be that checking your phone only addresses part of what you needed when you start to feel bored. Digital devices are very good at attracting your Attention – In Fact, Everything You Interact with on a Screen has been designed to capture, hold and monetise it – but much of what we do only doesn’Te do only doesn’T It’s incredibly easy to plan to look at your phone for just five minutes and resurface two hours laater with mastermind -LEVEL Knowledge of the Latest Blake Lively Controversy or Your exchange. The average American spends more than four hours a day on their smartphone and more than seven hours a day in total online. That adds up to spending 17 years of your adult life browsing the internet. I expert
Phones’ Efficiency at Whisking Us INTO SUTO SUPERCIAL STIMUTIS SHORT-CRICUTS Our Bore and Allows Us to Swiftly Evade Messages That We MIDT Need to HEAR, Such as “WHY AM I FELING ASES?” Or “What do i need that i’m not gettingting?” If we pause and listen, then perhaps we can make a choice rather than manipulated by software engineers. When boredom strikses, we should resist the urge to assuage it instantly and Ask Oyselves: are we in search of Pure entertainment or something more purpose Our Community or Something Different, Something New? The people who choose to embrace boredom, at least for a white, may paradoxically experience less of it. It could even be the first step towards a life that feels more stimulating overall: meaningful, creative and free.
Further reading
Bored and brilliant by manoush zomorodi (Pan Macmillan, £ 14.99)
Digital minimalism by cal Newport (Penguin, £ 10.99)
The antidote by Oliver Burkeman (Vintage, £ 10.99)
