Of course, some folks have been saying that for years, what with the proliferation of DVD players in minivans and such.
So when I go home to see my small nephews this holiday season, should I be hiding and destroying their portable electronic devices?
People have always relieved boredom. When I’m on a bus or a train or in a waiting room, I read. Did anyone complain that books were killing boredom?
I doubt that the phrase ‘killing boredom’ was used. My Mother* once commented that she’d have been a better reader if her parents, her Father particularly, hadn’t thought of reading as ‘being lazy’. As in, if they caught one of their children reading, they’d immediately find them a chore to do and comment on their laziness. Playing was fine, because it was using your muscles, but reading was being lazy.
A more typical comment would probably have been, and probably still is, ‘wasting your time on that _____’.
Yes.
Though I will say I think the article misses the mark a bit by focusing on boredom. The larger issue is that phones/PDAs are occupying an increasingly disturbing amount of involuntary attention, they are essentially occupying (hijacking?) the owner’s mind and creating reflexes and anxieties that didn’t exist 10 years ago.
I firmly believe that we have become a world of cell phone-nuts. People are most certainly less aware of their physical surroundings and there is much less interaction in coffee shops or public places these days, IMHO. People watch, listen, and observe the world around them less than they used to.
I went to the Apple Store the other day (to accompany my SO) and noticed how everyone is completely transfixed with the gadgetry (well, duh, it’s an Apple Store, that’s the point!). I was greeted 3 or 4 times very cheerily, although I suspect this is more of a anti-theft measure then a genuine welcome. The store feels very creepy to me.
Anyway, I feel like the rest of the world is becoming one big Apple Store and that is a frightening thing.
Yes, ecoaster, I’ve noticed the same thing.
Don’t get me wrong, a cellphone is useful, but I use it for a phone, and occasionally to look up something or get directions. Maybe I’ll play angry birds if I have to kill some time.
But I rarely text, I don’t even have a text plan, and I can’t imagine being constantly captivated by the thing like so many people seem to be these days.
I realized I was slipping toward having a problem when, a month ago, I was walking down the sidewalk with my almost-two-year-old son riding on my shoulders. I looked down at my phone to check my email, and THWACK his face smashed right into a bush whose branches overhung the sidewalk at about 6 1/2 feet up (I’m 6 feet tall).
He got a cut under his eye, which healed just fine, but he could have easily scratched his cornea, or worse.
Anyway, since that day, I find myself being much more choosy about when I succumb to the mobile device temptation. (We’ll see how long this lasts!).
Occasionally, I find myslf doing real, productive work in situations when this would have been pure “wasted” time in the past (watching my kid sleep in the car in the parking lot as my wife did some shopping, for example.) But such situations are few and far between.
I do find that, now, the times when I simply CANNOT access my device, but nor am I doing anything directly productive – e.g., when taking a long bike ride – have become the moments when the best thinking gets done.
Death: Human beings make life so interesting. Do you know, that in a universe so full of wonders, they have managed to invent boredom.
Yes but I think how you go about relieving boredom is the main point.
When I was a kid and there were only five TV channels to choose from and there were no video games and whatnot I had to use my creativity to relieve my boredom.
I might pull out my big box of legos and build something or explore the back yard and see what things were there or go for a bike ride or go to a friend’s house and play or (eventually) read and so on.
The point is the electronic devices are like fast food for the brain. I have seen two young girls at a kid’s birthday party sitting next to each other and texting each other (kidjanot).
I am no Luddite and I love my gizmos but as with most things moderation is key. I think some good, old fashioned boredom is good for kids. It causes them to exercise their mind to find ways to stop being bored rather than get a quick fix from their cell phone.
Louis CK: “‘I’m bored’ is a useless thing to say. You live in a great, big, vast world that you’ve seen none percent of. And even the inside of your own mind is endless. It goes on forever inwardly. Do you understand? Being the fact that you’re alive is amazing, so you don’t get to be bored.”
Your example doesn’t hold up your point. Yes, it’s absurd to see two kids in close proximity texting each other, but how is communicating through text more ‘fast food’ than communicating through speech?
I don’t agree with your point, anyway. Technology isn’t the problem. It’s how you use it. You could sit at home watching shows on TV or Youtube, or you could plug Zombies, Run! into your smartphone and use it to bolster your exercise regimen. You could flip through a Kindle reading books alone in your house, or use your phone to take pictures and share them with friends, as well as laughing and joking with them.
At best, I’ll grant that it’s probably easier to slip into more superficial thought patterns with technology, but it’s by no means the sole cause of it. Your bored no-tech kid with nothing to do might, instead of doing something creative or productive, go out and find a smaller kid or an animal to beat up or torment. It’s not the technology, it’s the person (and the parents).
Boredom has not been solved by the advent of the cellphone, but then again the concept of boredom is erroneously applied in the article.
Phone-checking/fiddling supplants moments of time that people used to use for THINKING or LOOKING AROUND or INTERACTING or WALkING etc…
I don’t think more people were bored in 1985 then now…
To your first point, texting is absolutely less expressive than talking. There are far fewer words and concepts transmitted via text than through conventional conversation. You also don’t listen through text. Listening is a skill that requires attention and cognitive processing. The fast-food analogy is very fitting.
Technology AND its usage is creating a different world, one that I would argue is not altogether better. I believe it’s a fallacy to see any technology as purely neutral. Jerrry Mander writes about this in Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television. The purpose and design of technology shapes how it is used and vice-versa. Bullets AND people kill people (ok, that’s a little clunky), just as PDAs AND people have merged to create some worrisome social/environmental issues.
The problem is not that they are killing boredom, it is that they are killing time to think. The reason that people get ideas in the shower is that the lack of stimulation lets you get in touch with your subconscious mind. In the old days walking, standing on line, riding the subway let you do that also. I notice that when I play music on my smartphone when walking the dog I have a lot fewer ideas than if I don’t. And that is far more passive than talking to someone or checking mail.
Books are different, since they are pull technology, and because to some extent your creative mind is involved when you read. You can stop and daydream at any time when you read - you can’t when watching a video.
I used to spend every spare minute with my nose in a book or magazine. Now I spend every spare minute with my nose in my smartphone or my computer, like I am doing at this moment while watching tv.
For the life of me, I don’t see the difference, reading is reading.
In both cases it depends on the sender and recipient. With some people the verbal signal to noise ratio is very low: My not-MIL * could not discribe a problem she had with her car without telling me what day she was driving it, who rode along, what store she was going to, what she was intending to buy, what she bought instead. Could she tell me how long the car was turned off before she had trouble re-starting it? Not without recounting what they ate for lunch, each store the shopped in, and the person from church they ran into…so about how many minutes would that have been? No idea.
Some people are poor listeners, and completely miss the point, or else interrupt and derail the speaker from the point he was trying to make. (they are not Enzo!) I recently experienced this with someone I was trying to apologize to. I got as far as telling them the bad thing I had done, and then they totally derailed the conversation. Fortunately (I found out the next time I saw them) they did not consider my transgression a big deal. If it had been, then this might have ended a friendship.
In many cases, I find text, or email a much more efficient and effective means of communication. Pretty much all cases where exchanging information is the point. It rather sucks for “touching base” or “catching up” kinds of communication. The fact that SMS messages are so short and painful to create forces a succinctness that I find to be a real advantage.
*Kevbabe and I have been living in sin for 20+ years. In some states, referring to her relatives as my in-laws would constitute common-law marriage. (or be a factor, anyway) That is not the case in New Mexico.
At least they are killing creativity 'cause there’s too much pre-arranged activity. Also they won’t let You relax.
( those may already be said but I got bored and didn’t read all… )
Not necessarily, it is merely a different kind of expression. Perhaps one you do not fully appreciate? I find that I have always expressed myself better in writing. That’s why my primary hobby is writing fiction. Telling my stories out loud just wouldn’t have the same effect, and I would not be able to structure the narrative in quite same way.
There are some conversations that work best in person, and there are some that work best in text. Text messages for me are the constant (but not obsessive) linking thread between me and certain people. I can organise things instantly, make last minute changes effectively (without having to deal with mutually hated small-talk) and by and large they generally enhance my social life.
As for people texting each other when they’re right next to each other - I’ve done it, but then it has always been a cute/fun thing to do (especially with my girlfriend when on a train with strangers, and there are certain things we want to keep to ourselves. 
) I’ve never seen people replace it for actual conversation. It’s just a more effective way of whispering.
Also, whilst there are certain nuances that text communication cannot replicate, there are certain nuances that speech communication cannot replicate. The main thing is permanency. If I tell someone to meet me at the pub at 8, they might forget, but if I text it to them, then that information is permanently with them. They can just look at their phone and the information is there.
I don’t think you should be blaming the technology. But then, I don’t think you should be giving a smartphone to a child. Children should definitely be allowed to experience some boredom, and learn to deal with it, to entertain themselves with creativity. On that score I completely agree.
But Draw Something is creative, right? 
Interesting thread…I don’t get the texting thing-my daughter has a compulsion to text like crazy. Most of the stuff is banal (like “where are you”, “what’s up”,etc.).
Harmless, I suppose. But I don’t get the attraction.
Everything has its place, and that’s including boredom, and time without the phone to just sit and be with your thoughts. And that, I fear is what we are losing - that ability to just sit quietly by yourself. People just can’t seem to do it.
<Doper fogey mode>
You kids today with your smart phones and your texting and your hula-hoops and your 23-skidoos! You’re not half the people we were in the old days! Why my parents used to wall me off in a space between the floor and the basement every day for ten hours to make me think … and I LIKED it!
</Doper fogey mode>
Did we ever have it, though? -
All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone - Blaise Pascal (1623–1662)