[jungler]

The more I think about the "boredom is good" concept, the more I suspect it's flawed. Bored kids get into trouble, especially as they get older. By 18, a very bored kid left to chance will have found an unhealthy outlet like drinking or property theft.

We have a lot of screens now. But it's what one sees and does with the screen that matters. There is an element of media as pollution in this, but it's contrasted against our notion of "the classics". We always end up with a youth that is a mixture of the misspent and the classics.

[NeedMoreTea]

Bored kids who are always bored and have no outlets to stem that boredom often get into trouble. I think that's pretty well known and correlated. It's a picture that's been seen in countless deprived areas. Some will make their own outlets that might include drink or crime. Others will make their own constructive outlets.

I doubt that degree of chance is what anyone is advocating. Instead a little dead time, or space to be bored every day or two is often the spark for something creative. Make a Lego model, draw a picture, go out on bikes for an hour, kick a football round the back garden, etc etc.

[mmmmpancakes]

“By 18, a very bored kid left to chance will have found an unhealthy outlet like drinking or property theft.”

Do you have some statistics to back up this claim, along with a comparison against teens who are not bored?

[marcell]

You’re trying to analyze raising children scientifically, and I think that’s impossible.

You can never measure bored teens against non-bored teens in any meaningful way. No parent will want to, or be able to participate in a scientific study to tests the effects of boredom on their teens. What would that even look like? Randomize parents in two groups, and have them change their parenting in prescribed ways? No parent would agree to that.

Even if you did that study, and parents didn’t fail to follow the instructions, the results wouldn’t be applicable. Humans are different. What works for one teen may be counterproductive for another. You could get an average impact of 0, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t impact on a per-teen basis.

And of course, you don’t even know what outcome you want to optimize for. Is it grades? Number of friends? Salary at age 35?

Raising kids is (for better or worse) completely unscientific. Discussions are based in anecdotes and personal experience, not statistics.

[Nasrudith]

It also isn't new at all - the puritans had similar ideas that took them from ruling England after ousting the king to what may be snarkily summarized "We prefer nobility over these self-rightious fundamentalists wankers."

It is a toxic "your misery is good for you because it flatters my ego" attitude mixed in with nostalgia for a past that never was.

Being able to deal with boredom productively is useful but that doesn't make boredom a virtue or a good way to promote it any more than being able to stay sane in maximum security with only a library makes isolation a virtue and solitary confinement a good way to promote sanity and literacy.