There's a brazillian song called Tédio (Boredom) that was popular in the 80's. It talks about not withstanding boredom inside home, while life goes on out there. It's curious how the depicted feeling is so unrelatable today.
I think boredom is a real force that pushes ourselves to the edge, to hopefully make a change in life, like going out to see real people.
Social media creates this cozy, safe place to keep your mind occupied, letting life pass without realizing it.
But why do people blame social media for that? Every entertainment is equally at fault, wherever it's fictions, movies, tv series, comics/webtoons, games etc
I'm so grateful for having abandoned social networks. My main motivator were the fights over political weaponization of COVID-19, but then I went on and abandoned youtube and news as well. Now, I'm halfway with my first book, found a new hobby and developed my previous ones, rediscovered programming for fun, am learning a new foreign language, found a new job with very good compensation, lost 10 kg and became a better husband. My life is so fundamentally better.
> to hopefully make a change in life, like going out to see real people.
I’m fascinated by this narrative on the “real” people outside. I wonder how having more people working remote could change that cultural landscape, and how much time it will take for people to go over the dichotomy of “real” vs “online”.
There are wonderful people with tons of insight and many things to share in the “outside” world. But thing is, they are also online and will share their life philosophy or their new hiking gears in reddit threads as well.
Went to a cafe last week and after a bunch of talk with the owner, he went to ask for my Twitter account and who I was following in the same cultural sphere. And it’s not like we stopped being real the moment we moved our focus to what happens online.
It’s very difficult when you have to make a conscious decision to.. be bored. I do think most people still get stimuli like loneliness that hopefully drives them out sometimes.
Interesting. We should not forget that social media creates this cozy safe place for everyone, so even if you personally realize that, your friends and acquaintances may not.
In my own experience, since around 2010 and with the rise of social media and streaming services -especially after covid- people are more inclined to spend time at home instead of hanging out or doing stuff "in real life"
Perhaps this is due to my insufficient understanding of English, but "an abundance of uninterrupted time spent in relative solitude" doesn't sound like boredom to me, especially if the time is spent on active thinking.
If you are deeply engaged in musing, despite the solitary situation, you are not really bored, are you? At least I wouldn't call it being bored. You've got something to do, and you're well occupied by it. It's just thinking time to me. Such a situation I'd never characterize as boring (unless it lasts a ridiculous time, which reminds me of _Chess Story_).
What I think of as "boredom" is more like being in a sporadic lecture, doing assignments that are lengthy and thoughtless, being locked in a traffic jam, etc. Something that takes time, repulses attention, but has sufficient consequence that compels your concentration. And I don't think those are helpful in the profoundness of anything.
So, if the premise is "social media may prevent users from reaping creative rewards of time to profoundly think", I'd agree. But "profound boredom"? I just couldn't get behind this terminology.
I think it’s an attempt to refer to the mind idling, without active engagement, left to itself to wonder, improvise, manifest spontaneous connections… create.
Quit Twitter about 6 years ago because of related issues. Checked out Mastodon, but apart from the distributed aspect it just seems like more of the same, as in an evolution upon the experience of watching TV, in the internet era. I've been quite happy without it since.
The whole problem with social media is the feed. Remove that feed and replace it with something that is not the mechanism to keep users captive and most of the issues with social media are solved.
One of the ways to achieve that is to make people at the center of app. The user chooses avatar from multiple avatars on main screen and view their updates. Once they have viewed someone's update they can go back do it for other, it becomes boring very fast and discourages app usage. No social media company is going to do this but something of this sort needs to happen.
Exactly! It's the digital equivalent of placing the milk at the back of the grocery store. It's meant to distract you from why you're there in the first place.
This is actually almost exactly what Snapchat stories - now also on Instagram and Facebook - achieve. You can click through your friend’s updates, reply as you want, and when you’ve seen everyone you’re out of content until someone posts again. I kinda like using these apps in this way, because it’s still cool to see what people are up to, usually more genuine, and harder to get sucked down the scroll.
I think it would have similar effect of reddit or youtube. 99% of the time I use reddit or youtube, it's started with search to jump straight to a topic.
And that is better because the demand side is an active, the knowledge side is the sort of passive. So mediocre knowledge wouldn't have the money backed ads power to outperform the better knowledge or solution.
This looked interesting and then I read the following in the press release: “Dr Hill said the research sampled 15 participants of varying age, occupational and education backgrounds in England and the Republic of Ireland, who had been put on furlough or asked to work from home.”
So the hypothesis is based on 15 people, in one region of the world, in a very specific circumstance. The authors admit the research is limited, but if you don’t read deeply into the press release you might come away thinking this finding—if you can call it that—is much more solid than the actual survey methodology would support.
> Dr Hill said the research sampled 15 participants of varying age, occupational and education backgrounds in England and the Republic of Ireland, who had been put on furlough or asked to work from home. He said the survey was relatively limited and that it also would be valuable to examine, for example, the role that material conditions and social class played in people’s experience of boredom.
> “We think these initial findings will resonate with so many people’s experiences of the pandemic and their use of social media to alleviate boredom, and we would like to see this research taken further,” he said.
Funny to read this today. Last night I got sick of TV, sick of all the interwebs' distractions, and just sat there with eyes closed, letting my mind wander.
Finally I remembered I wanted to read Fathers and Sons (Turgenev). Here's a great question: why am I here and not reading that? BRB.
> “Profound boredom may sound like an overwhelmingly negative concept but, in fact, it can be intensely positive if people are given the chance for undistracted thinking and development.”
Is there historical evidence, from before social media or computers existed, that boredom made people productive or creative? I am worried about my kids never ever being bored, and the points in the article are tempting to believe, but when I think about history, I’m sure people were more lots more bored but not sure they were creatively doing any better than what we see today.
Boredom is what led to pretty much every project I've ever done. I usually have a list in my head of things that could be made better, but they never come to anything until I have a lengthy period of nothing to do.
Latest example: I had to take all my vacation time this year or else I'd lose it. I got so bored that I built this over the past weeks: https://github.com/kstenerud/kbnf
Anecdotally, I do a lot less personal projects and wild exploration since spending much more time on the net every day. This resonates to other people’s comments I think.
On the other hand, when looking back at what I was doing a decade or two ago, they were dumber, clunkier and just less interesting things overall. My personal take is that the barrier to invest time into something is now a lot higher, but the results are to me much more fulfilling and impacting.
Doing stuff out of pure boredom wasn’t as efficient and engaging as doing stuff that I long thought about and actively create time to execute on.
My four step kids have no idea what boredom is. I, however, do, and found most of my creative endeavours and hobbies arose when I was bored. I'm pretty sure if boredom wasn't the alternative, I wouldn't have learned the guitar, or spent many hours daydreaming science fiction fantasies.
I think it's hard to judge, because we have so many more tools and resources today which amplify creative output.
It might true that we are have more creative output today than we did 100 years ago, while also being true that social media stifles us from reaching our full creative potential.
I did not read the study, but the finding seems trivial and limited at the same time:
Anything you do to alleviate or prevent boredom that is not creative can be said to 'prevent reaping creative rewards' of boredom. Not just social media (or any media consumption, really) but also sports or calling a friend or helping in a soup kitchen. If you didn't do it, you'd feel boredom, and might pick up something creative instead.
This is no doubt true but smart phones basically give you the option to never be bored, and get instant gratification whenever you feel like it. I don’t think it is limited to social media but I imagine there are pretty profound consequences to that.
Social media is distinct in that it's not one thing, one experience.
It's many different experiences, that users are cut between, exposed to. Where-as calling a friend every hour doesnt make sense & would get repetitive, one can just drop into the feed of experiences whenever they want.
Your point remains, certainly. But I do think there's a kind of unbridled access to novelty & other-peoples-creativeness that is indeed remarkably blunting when compared to most personal lives & options we'd have.
Sports use more muscles and cardio than social media scrolling. Phonecalls at least rely on speech instead of an algorithm deciding what to show you. Helping in a Soup Kitchen is obviously more productive than doom-scrolling.
All of those examples are better uses of time than passively consuming "Social Media"
I am reading Antifragile by Nassim Taleb, and one of his points is that much of invention happens either out of necessity or outside of structure vs traditional R&D / Academia.
I was wondering how much social media filling in all spare time keeps people from tinkering and inventing and making progress.
Though, I suspect the tinkers are still spending a lot of time tinkering - and only the people who have nothing better to do are spending most of their time on social media.
There is a line of research according to which social media create addiction [0]. When we are addicted to social media, we have less and less time for tinkering and pushing the envelope, because a sizeable part of our time is claimed by such media.
[0] Griffiths, M. D. (2012). Facebook addiction: Concerns, criticism, and recommendations: A response to Andreassen and colleagues. Psychological Reports, 110, 518–520. https://doi.org/10.2466/01.07.18.PR0.110.2.518-520
I thought this was a well known observable fact. There are certain creative thought processes that only occur to me when I really have absolutely nothing else to think about, but that basically never happens anymore thanks to the internet. The only reason I'm even aware that I'm missing out on this is because it still happens when I take long showers, so basically the only time I don't have a phone or computer with me.
A powerful, constant, extremely low-effort distraction.
It's blinding to all of your senses and thoughts because as long as your attention is consumed by this fascinating object everything else is invisible.
Walls of blindness surround you. A kind of invisible prison.
I live in a different country, continent because of the boredom of buses in late 90’s.
I would look around and just see how little was happening in my town. I hated it, it spurned me on to escape.
If the monotony of bus journeys was eased by social media I am sure I may still be there.
It's certainly a way to waste time, but social media is also where I've found a lot of creative partners to work on side projects with, and it's where I've found a lot of inspiration too when looking at people's art, microfiction, etc. So I feel like for me it's probably at least net neutral when I use it properly instead of just doomscrolling.
Actually being creative requires work, a lot of it, and the people who are very creative think the work is fun or have accepted it. Best to get into a regular groove of doing your creative work on a predictable schedule.
The opposite of being bored is cultivating your interests, treating them like a garden that takes work but grows over time into a variety of wonderful things.
What exactly is the difference between idling, daydreaming, meditating, musing or sitting on sofa with eyes shut and profound boredom?
Aren't all these activities doing the same thing, giving the brain pause to calm down, to refocus. Perhaps our brains require idle times as our bodies need pause after exercise.
> Profound boredom stems from an abundance of uninterrupted time spent in relative solitude, which can lead to indifference, apathy, and people questioning their sense of self and their existence - but which Heidegger said could also pave the way to more creative thinking and activity.
I wonder if there is a record of what could help one break out of 'indeifference, apathy, ...' phase and into the 'creative thinking and activity' phase. It is just a matter of time? Is it possible only for some and not for others? Have you, dear reader, succesfully transitioned to the latter phase and as a result, change the course of your life towards a desirable goal?
Wrote a book covering this topic this year. You could live an entire life not being bored. There’s definitely different types of boredom and we are constantly distracted from the good kinds.
[+] [-] highspeedbus|3 years ago|reply
I think boredom is a real force that pushes ourselves to the edge, to hopefully make a change in life, like going out to see real people.
Social media creates this cozy, safe place to keep your mind occupied, letting life pass without realizing it.
[+] [-] 411111111111111|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] myth2018|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] makeitdouble|3 years ago|reply
I’m fascinated by this narrative on the “real” people outside. I wonder how having more people working remote could change that cultural landscape, and how much time it will take for people to go over the dichotomy of “real” vs “online”.
There are wonderful people with tons of insight and many things to share in the “outside” world. But thing is, they are also online and will share their life philosophy or their new hiking gears in reddit threads as well.
Went to a cafe last week and after a bunch of talk with the owner, he went to ask for my Twitter account and who I was following in the same cultural sphere. And it’s not like we stopped being real the moment we moved our focus to what happens online.
[+] [-] coffeebeqn|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hattori31|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fblp|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 40amxn40|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] powersnail|3 years ago|reply
If you are deeply engaged in musing, despite the solitary situation, you are not really bored, are you? At least I wouldn't call it being bored. You've got something to do, and you're well occupied by it. It's just thinking time to me. Such a situation I'd never characterize as boring (unless it lasts a ridiculous time, which reminds me of _Chess Story_).
What I think of as "boredom" is more like being in a sporadic lecture, doing assignments that are lengthy and thoughtless, being locked in a traffic jam, etc. Something that takes time, repulses attention, but has sufficient consequence that compels your concentration. And I don't think those are helpful in the profoundness of anything.
So, if the premise is "social media may prevent users from reaping creative rewards of time to profoundly think", I'd agree. But "profound boredom"? I just couldn't get behind this terminology.
[+] [-] andrei_says_|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pcurve|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Towaway69|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dreen|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] quaintdev|3 years ago|reply
One of the ways to achieve that is to make people at the center of app. The user chooses avatar from multiple avatars on main screen and view their updates. Once they have viewed someone's update they can go back do it for other, it becomes boring very fast and discourages app usage. No social media company is going to do this but something of this sort needs to happen.
[+] [-] trhr|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] suketk|3 years ago|reply
If anyone is interested, I wrote about why feeds are bad and how you can reduce your dependence on them. https://suketk.com/feeds-considered-harmful
[+] [-] ilrwbwrkhv|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] octoluke|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] malikNF|3 years ago|reply
I have noticed doing this has massively reduced the amount of time I spend there.
[1] https://mashable.com/article/set-twitter-timeline-most-recen...
[+] [-] Existenceblinks|3 years ago|reply
And that is better because the demand side is an active, the knowledge side is the sort of passive. So mediocre knowledge wouldn't have the money backed ads power to outperform the better knowledge or solution.
[+] [-] simonmesmith|3 years ago|reply
So the hypothesis is based on 15 people, in one region of the world, in a very specific circumstance. The authors admit the research is limited, but if you don’t read deeply into the press release you might come away thinking this finding—if you can call it that—is much more solid than the actual survey methodology would support.
[+] [-] Sakos|3 years ago|reply
> Dr Hill said the research sampled 15 participants of varying age, occupational and education backgrounds in England and the Republic of Ireland, who had been put on furlough or asked to work from home. He said the survey was relatively limited and that it also would be valuable to examine, for example, the role that material conditions and social class played in people’s experience of boredom.
> “We think these initial findings will resonate with so many people’s experiences of the pandemic and their use of social media to alleviate boredom, and we would like to see this research taken further,” he said.
[+] [-] Jorengarenar|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] AlbertCory|3 years ago|reply
Finally I remembered I wanted to read Fathers and Sons (Turgenev). Here's a great question: why am I here and not reading that? BRB.
[+] [-] nehal3m|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dahart|3 years ago|reply
Is there historical evidence, from before social media or computers existed, that boredom made people productive or creative? I am worried about my kids never ever being bored, and the points in the article are tempting to believe, but when I think about history, I’m sure people were more lots more bored but not sure they were creatively doing any better than what we see today.
[+] [-] kstenerud|3 years ago|reply
Latest example: I had to take all my vacation time this year or else I'd lose it. I got so bored that I built this over the past weeks: https://github.com/kstenerud/kbnf
[+] [-] peepee1982|3 years ago|reply
I now have to actively lock myself out of certain services and do daily meditation sessions to somewhat counteract those distractions.
They're just too easy to indulge in.
I've mostly stopped doing music and writing prose because of it, and I'm slowly getting back into the groove.
[+] [-] makeitdouble|3 years ago|reply
On the other hand, when looking back at what I was doing a decade or two ago, they were dumber, clunkier and just less interesting things overall. My personal take is that the barrier to invest time into something is now a lot higher, but the results are to me much more fulfilling and impacting.
Doing stuff out of pure boredom wasn’t as efficient and engaging as doing stuff that I long thought about and actively create time to execute on.
[+] [-] signaru|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] djaychela|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ckardat123|3 years ago|reply
It might true that we are have more creative output today than we did 100 years ago, while also being true that social media stifles us from reaching our full creative potential.
[+] [-] tcmb|3 years ago|reply
Anything you do to alleviate or prevent boredom that is not creative can be said to 'prevent reaping creative rewards' of boredom. Not just social media (or any media consumption, really) but also sports or calling a friend or helping in a soup kitchen. If you didn't do it, you'd feel boredom, and might pick up something creative instead.
[+] [-] mrbombastic|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rektide|3 years ago|reply
It's many different experiences, that users are cut between, exposed to. Where-as calling a friend every hour doesnt make sense & would get repetitive, one can just drop into the feed of experiences whenever they want.
Your point remains, certainly. But I do think there's a kind of unbridled access to novelty & other-peoples-creativeness that is indeed remarkably blunting when compared to most personal lives & options we'd have.
[+] [-] armatav|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nullish_signal|3 years ago|reply
All of those examples are better uses of time than passively consuming "Social Media"
[+] [-] onlyrealcuzzo|3 years ago|reply
I was wondering how much social media filling in all spare time keeps people from tinkering and inventing and making progress.
Though, I suspect the tinkers are still spending a lot of time tinkering - and only the people who have nothing better to do are spending most of their time on social media.
[+] [-] adg001|3 years ago|reply
[0] Griffiths, M. D. (2012). Facebook addiction: Concerns, criticism, and recommendations: A response to Andreassen and colleagues. Psychological Reports, 110, 518–520. https://doi.org/10.2466/01.07.18.PR0.110.2.518-520
[+] [-] Towaway69|3 years ago|reply
Discovered that there are two kinds of boredom!
Thank you boredom and HN for making my boredom strangely productive.
[+] [-] hkon|3 years ago|reply
I remember just sitting in my living room thinking, "man watching TV is boring, I would rather do <whatever productive thing>".
The picture in the article could have been me. It had a magical just-do-it effect because I really had no better alternatives around.
[+] [-] bakugo|3 years ago|reply
I thought this was a well known observable fact. There are certain creative thought processes that only occur to me when I really have absolutely nothing else to think about, but that basically never happens anymore thanks to the internet. The only reason I'm even aware that I'm missing out on this is because it still happens when I take long showers, so basically the only time I don't have a phone or computer with me.
[+] [-] swayvil|3 years ago|reply
It's blinding to all of your senses and thoughts because as long as your attention is consumed by this fascinating object everything else is invisible.
Walls of blindness surround you. A kind of invisible prison.
[+] [-] RHSman2|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kranke155|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kevingadd|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Isamu|3 years ago|reply
The opposite of being bored is cultivating your interests, treating them like a garden that takes work but grows over time into a variety of wonderful things.
[+] [-] Towaway69|3 years ago|reply
Aren't all these activities doing the same thing, giving the brain pause to calm down, to refocus. Perhaps our brains require idle times as our bodies need pause after exercise.
[+] [-] tapanjk|3 years ago|reply
I wonder if there is a record of what could help one break out of 'indeifference, apathy, ...' phase and into the 'creative thinking and activity' phase. It is just a matter of time? Is it possible only for some and not for others? Have you, dear reader, succesfully transitioned to the latter phase and as a result, change the course of your life towards a desirable goal?
[+] [-] thenerdhead|3 years ago|reply