The next time you feel the urge to scroll, click, or glance at your phone, resist the urge, if only to avoid boredom. Instead of preventing boredom, screen time makes it worse by increasing inattention, one of the main contributors to boredom.
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Self-reported boredom in the United States has increased dramatically from an average of the 50th percentile in 2009 to an average of the 94th percentile in 2020. Surprisingly, this sharp increase in boredom is also highly correlated with self-reported problematic social media use. Additionally, when bored, people typically switch between digital content platforms, fast-forward through content, or skip content altogether, a behavior that ironically makes the boredom even worse.
What causes boredom?
People usually feel bored when they can’t maintain their concentration. Meanwhile, digital devices will bombard users with a median of 237 notifications each day as of 2023. These notifications disrupt attention, worsen reaction times, slow progress on tasks, and interrupt activity. And if you think this disruption is due to predatory algorithms or app messaging, you’re wrong. Instead, users initiate 89% of interactions with their smartphones and check or use their devices every 5 minutes.
This behavior also creates a vicious cycle. Digital media algorithms prioritize stimulation and entertainment, leading users to perceive it as a boring activity that lacks rapid visual and auditory stimulation. On the other hand, users also quickly become accustomed to these stimuli, leading to decreased long-term enjoyment and well-being.
Lack of consistency = meaningless dialogue
Ironically, smartphones also promote boredom by repeatedly exposing users to a torrent of inconsistent content. However, boredom is directly correlated with the user’s perception of meaninglessness, which is directly attributable to a lack of consistency. Boredom thus results from too much content and too little information available in an environment where even the most concentrated attempts to derive meaning from the content are difficult. On the other hand, students who use smartphones to escape boredom paradoxically report higher levels of boredom and lower enjoyment, interest, and effort in class. Boredom once prompted us to reevaluate our work and lives and seek more meaningful and rewarding activities. However, most smartphone users now try to avoid boredom by using their smartphones as a short-term escape from boredom.
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The costs of boredom: social, educational, political, and personal.
Smartphone users suffer from a growing and inevitable cycle of boredom, but chronic boredom itself carries enormous social costs. Self-reported chronic boredom ensues, leading to increased levels of anxiety and depression. Furthermore, people who report chronic boredom also show increased risk-taking behavior and decreased self-control. Reports of chronic boredom are also correlated with outgroup-blaming behaviors. Moreover, social media addiction similarly reduces user agency, and increased chronic boredom is strongly associated with political extremism.
Students who identify themselves as chronically bored also struggle academically. Additionally, these students, including those enrolled in elite universities, suffer from a severe lack of reading comprehension due to lack of concentration, resulting in them being unable to read a book or read even a single poem. I have a student.
Concentration is difficult, as medieval monks discovered during a life devoted to concentration and concentration. However, as research has shown, students with smartphones, whose focus was driven by curiosity rather than boredom, had lower levels of boredom and higher grades.
Using a smartphone has proven to be a difficult habit to break, but it can be just as harmful if left unchecked.
