I believe smartphones have completely destroyed most people’s ability to be bored. Whenever anyone has an opportunity for boredom, they pick up their phone.
Oftentimes it has even moved up the priority above the bottom — boredom — and even taken precedence over other leisure activities like reading, TV, or just sitting and talking. For many, it’s even close to the top, trumping work and other responsibilities. So boredom certainly stands no chance.
If people actually try and sit with just their thoughts, staring out into nature or the walls of their home, they become anxious, like an addict that can’t get their fix.
I appreciate many of the modern conveniences that come with smartphones, but I often miss the days before them.
I think it’s basically a crime against children and humanity for parents to put an iPad (flashing meaningless drivel) in front of their children while pushing them through a supermarket, or a park, or in a restaurant. It baffles me how frequently I see this done nowadays, like children need a constant flashing distraction to keep them from asking questions or being bored. I want to smash every iPad I see used like this. Let children be bored and have their own thoughts. It’s not painful for a child to have to sit in a trolley or a stroller while they’ve nothing to do. In a restaurant they might even learn language and ideas from the adult conversation no matter their age. In my eyes, if you’re a parent who does this, it’s a parenting fail particularly given you managed to get through your own childhood without the same.
My opinion on this topic, while perhaps not as strong as yours, is similar.
I think we inadvertantly created a similar dependence in our daughter, albeit with books rather than electronics.
She is 10 now and, aside from some exposure at school, she has never been allowed personal use of computers and the various computer-like devices we have today.
We did reading curriculum at home between 4 and 5. By 6 she was reading on her own for pleasure.
Today the child walks from room to room in the house with a book. Car rides without a book are accompanied with groans and anger. Any situation where boredom could set in is much worse if she doesn't have a book. She has to be specifically prodded not to read in order to get ready for school, etc, in a timely fashion.
I don't wish we'd done anything differently, but when she does eventually have access to electronics I fear she is going to transfer her extreme book "dependency" to electronics easily.
This was me 18 years ago, I think as long as the curiosity transfers to something in the real world over time, this is an amazing thing. Like reading museum placards, writing in a diary about her day to day observations, etc. Also, the reading to writing pipeline is probably the easiest to achieve when someone is young and inculcates a lot of thoughtfulness.
Also I don't think the two dependencies can be equated. Electronics create super short attention spans, books are the complete opposite. So I think she's already doing better than most her age.
Also me when I was young. The only downside was a more realistic (not mature) view of the world. This has lead men to not doing things that would have been mistakes easily forgiven at that age. My real life was a bit boring (I’d carefully select friends, keeping myself out of troubles) because my imaginary life was exciting enough). Apart from the knowledge I acquired, the upside is that I can keep track of a lot of abstractions needed for problem solving.
Whoa, same here! I too had a realistic view of the world, but at the same time was super naive. And the entire phase of teenage rebellion did not exist for me, kinda weird when I see it mentioned everywhere all the time. And "boring" was and sometimes still is the way to describe me - too cautious, and not enough spontaneity.
But I don't think I'd change anything even going back. Too many benefits...
I was this kid. It led to a lifelong love of reading and illustration which I’ve shared with friends and continue to cherish to this day. Sometimes the only think driving me out the door is the opportunity to draw something new or chance upon a good book or magazine. It also led to terrible eyesight, but generally your daughter is probably going to be fine.
Why does reading lead to poor vision? You've got me interested particularly because I have such an odd dynamic with this. I don't feel like my lens prescription has really changed at all (like ever) but I suppose I would have to check the prescriptions to be sure.
Are there ways to attenuate what you're referring to you are aware of?
It's long, uninterrupted periods of staring at a very near object, usually lit artificially unless you have a pleasant reading space by a window. It leads almost invariable to nearsightedness more than just 'poor vision'. This effect is more pronounced in children due to the fact that their eyes are still growing and change shape much more easily. There have started to be myopic toddlers where this was previously a very rare genetics based phenomena.
Sounds like how I was as a kid, always with a novel and then the advent of access to desktop internet in middle school hit. But hey, at least it’s a better foundation for literacy.
I think desktop computers are great for kids. I grew up using one from an early age, and I would have no hesitation giving my own kids that same access.
It's portable entertainment (phones, tablets, maybe even books unless you have a rule that they never leave the house) that I am deeply reluctant about. You can't lug a desktop to the park.
OP here - I wouldn’t have anything like the same reaction to books, even though it might be argued that they’re the same as an iPad in being a technological distraction device. I don’t think they are at all, being a world of artistry created by the author, and requiring mind and imagination to decode. If my child needed a book all the time, I’d be pretty pleased about it. My general point was toward both the iPad use as some kind of defeater for the child being bored AND the content on those iPads - every one I see seems to be rapidly flashing, multicoloured simulation of barely even a cartoon, just some irresistible schema of child-directed content. Books are a world away from this. I’d encourage the book reading, it’s a different thing for a child to be engrossed in reading opposed to hectically distracted away from thinking and acting by an irresistible supernormal stimulus. I hope your child grows into a great writer one day.
Because rising a child is genuine hard. And it's only getting harder everyday. The cities are crowded. People are less tolerant to noisy children. If your parenting is not what people expect they will judge you on social media (instead of a very small social circle like before). Many once common parenting practices are literal crime now. And housing and school are only getting more expensive.
The most tolerable alternative is simply not to have children, and it will just be more and more common.
My tolerance was tested today when a Mum and her princess took up 3 seats at a cafe today and let the daughter watch YouTube videos loudly on her iPad without any headphones.
I still don't understand why parents take their kids to boring cafes and restaurants. Kids want to do noisy things and run around. I didn't go to cafes until I was about 12. Prior to that weekends would be spent be walking the dogs, going to parks, forests, picnics etc
I totally get that parents want to get out the house, socialise etc but are you really going to reduce this argument down to /wanting/ to do something? Because you know people will respond with all the things they /want/ to do but don't because of respect and consideration.
> In a restaurant they might even learn language and ideas from the adult conversation
Their parents will have their phone in hand while pushing the discussions.
On the general point: I remember a time smaller kids couldn't get into most restaurants at all because they would disturb the atmosphere (and I'm sure there's still many shops that won't allow kids).
Also people are way more susceptible to kids being noisy. It might be because exposure to kids has been so low for the majority of adults, but parents will get an utter amount of flack for letting their kid cry or shout and not immediately cater to them.
It's hard to have it both ways, our modern society will need to be more open to kid noise and disturbance if we want parents to just let the kids be kids.
The options aren’t iPad or uncontrollable noise. I think you’re missing the third option - parenting the kids. Disciplining children (even just verbally) seems to be something nobody wants to do anymore. If I was told to be quiet as a kid I did it because I knew I’d get in trouble otherwise.
Some kids will behave with just a verbal cue. For the better or worse, most won't. That's one of the reason some restaurants have a play area, to deal with that tension.
> Disciplining children (even just verbally) seems to be something nobody wants to do anymore
Absolutely. Visit France; see many well-behaved and well-dressed children eating with their parents at cafes and restaurants. It's almost like they respect that this is actually their parents' treat time - that they've been taught that they are not the centre of the universe.
Sometimes the days are long, kid is driving you up a wall and the iPad just…works
My kid isn’t that old yet but partner and I have agreed no screens for first 15 mo at least. So anytime she’s watching TV we turn him away because he’s definitely interested!
There’s also a lot of people who willingly don’t have kids and some of them think children are dogs which talk and scream instead of barking. Another is the type of parent who has a couple children with the gene of compliance active and think they’re literally gods of parenting and if your child misbehaves it’s your fault.
Completely agree. The other thing I've noticed is that this "lack of boredom" has really killed my creativity. Phone use (especially scrolling, scrolling, scrolling) gets my brain stuck in repeated patterns that is the antithesis of creativity.
I really wonder what the endgame of all this is. The "attention addiction" enabled by smartphones, and all the apps that are designed by some of the smartest people on the planet whose sole incentive is to keep you addicted, is IMO one of the most detrimental impacts by tech on human happiness in the past 100 years.
Smartphones are sort of the ultimate mind-occupier in terms of portability, but it seems like for long drives lots of people have just taken to listening to audiobooks and podcasts.
It seems like we’re at a state of FOMO where every moment has to be optimized for stimulation, whether for “unproductive” entertainment or for “productive” learning. If our eyes are too focused on driving then we let our ears instead be our means to become busy away from our present surroundings.
My middle ground for this is walking. It gives me enough input to suppress my habit of entertaining myself using a smartphone, and it also makes staring at a screen quite impractical. But it gives me enough room to just process my thoughts.
And music, too. It’s underrated what a cultural cognitive shift into multitasking and experiencing the world through an artificial auditory filter that the Walkman, and then the iPod, brought to society even before smartphones.
I think it’s not just addiction but anxiety of being alone with one’s thoughts.
I love doing long solo bicycle rides. Just heading out and spending whole day riding by myself. Over the years, I bumped into many people who find such trips scary. Scared of thoughts that could pop up. Some said they could do that with headphones and music, but silence was no go.
Man, that's grim. I just think these people think the moment they go out alone with their thoughts, the first one is something real morbid: Maybe I should kill myself! Slow down buddy, we were just going on a walk alone.
To be fair to those people, I did have plenty of grim thoughts pop up in my head. Dealing with some of them wasn't easy. But IMO it's better to be away what is going on deep inside yourself rather than let it brew till it explodes in very nasty ways. But I do see how unprepared people may be afraid. Especially if they do have vague idea of what is going on inside them.
Same here with the rides. Yesterday I rode 50 miles by myself for the first time in a while, and was impressed with the amount of things going on in my life that I just hadn’t thought about.
All of my best ideas come on the bike or in the shower.
One of my favorite times to practice not looking at my phone is when I'm waiting for something outside of my home. Waiting for a coffee at the cafe? Stare off into space, not at my phone.
I find the only time this is difficult is if I'm in a crowded area, and I'm anxiously concerned that I don't appear to be staring at a person like some creep. Then I feel one of my only options is to stare at a phone. But I also don't have a lot of entertaining apps on my phone so maybe I'll check the weather eight or nine times.
I wonder if this "stay in the way of it and let it hit you like a track..." piece is his wording.
Three years ago I was really grieving lost relationship, floating (not drowning) in sadness... and I found this piece of electronic music by San and Tac [0] with these words placed in the background. I would listen to this song and one day I realized, walking in a park, that I could really let it in. And I did... at it was beautiful...
I find any form of exercise extremely boring. I go on these multi-hour bike rides which are borderline untolerably boring to me, especially at night. They do seem to have the side effects of stimulating the thoughts, reducing stress and better sleep, but to me it's just as bad as staring at the wall for a few hours, so a pretty big artificial effort.
As an avid long distance cyclist, I talked to multiple people from, let’s say, conventional meditation community. All of them agreed that solo cycling is damn close to meditation if not the same. Especially road cycling, mountain biking is a different beast. On calm backroads, of course.
Personally wall-style meditation is damn hard. But cycling makes it doable. My routine is to focus on cycling for the first hour or so. Which is also needed to get away from the city and suburb traffic. By the time I’m far away there’s enough endorphins and whatnot in the system to help and then sliding into my own deep thoughts is pretty easy. For some time till physical exhaustion kicks in.
What I find crucial is pre-planned route and having already ridden it. No need for checking the map, no fear of missing a turn without navigation and no new sights to stare at.
And pace is important. Slow & steady. Not too slow. Zone 3 is perfect IMO.
Extremely repetitive in terms of scenery, breath, everything. The first few laps get into the rhythm and later ones are just you and your thoughts. Or, if you're lucky, just you.
As a "boxer", my active tike is over and I do only for the workout by now, it isbsomewhere in between. It is not boring, especially sparring, but then the drills and general carduo is boring in the sense thatvit doesn't need a lot of concentration of the complete brain. You just don't think a lot, meaning while doing it a huge part, of at least my, brain runs on idle.
Thinking of it, I need to go to the gym more. And I need some periodd of general boredom. Lately my brain had close to no occassion to run partially idle and I feel it.
I agree to an extent. When I was younger I wanted to read anything over being bored. Sitting on the toilet would lead me to read the toilet perfume spray ingredients many times over.
Oftentimes it has even moved up the priority above the bottom — boredom — and even taken precedence over other leisure activities like reading, TV, or just sitting and talking. For many, it’s even close to the top, trumping work and other responsibilities. So boredom certainly stands no chance.
If people actually try and sit with just their thoughts, staring out into nature or the walls of their home, they become anxious, like an addict that can’t get their fix.
I appreciate many of the modern conveniences that come with smartphones, but I often miss the days before them.