“I’m Bored”.

Are you bored?

Are you ever bored at work? At home? Maybe you get bored with people around? Most certainly you get bored by yourself?

The answer is most likely yes. We all get bored. Human beings are machines that thirst for knowledge. We require sensory input, and when our minds don’t have that constant flow of input, they don’t know what to do. Boredom is defined as an emotion or signal that signals to your brain that what you’re doing doesn’t give you satisfaction. How much of what you do every day truly gives you satisfaction? Do you get satisfaction from emptying the dishwasher? Probably not.

That definition of boredom is an interesting one to process because I hear “I’m bored” all the time from my two boys. I hear it even when they’re experiencing some downtime or reading, or out and about on a walk in Austin. All of these activities seem satisfactory to me, but it’s not always the case for them. I believe in their adolescent brains, most of these activities have an innate value intellectually and can provide mental satisfaction if they would focus on it, but for them it provides very little emotional satisfaction because they love certain things like playing games and hanging with friends far more. Kids need emotional satisfaction more than adults because it is social re-enforcement that what they are doing is right and fun. Fun is a primary motivator for kids, and if you aren’t having fun, you are missing out (we’ll get to that in a minute). Kids haven’t yet determined that it can be fun to be doing nothing. Adults know it well. Even with all that, I feel kids overuse the word while not truly knowing what it means.

All of this definitional diatribe is intended to point out that my kids have no capacity whatsoever for being bored, and I doubt yours do either.

What do teenage kids do when they’re “bored”? They stare at their phones. My 13 year old is basically incapable of just looking around and being in the moment. Kids are addicted to input. They can’t function without constant sensory input. This gives them satisfaction. They believe they need mental stimulation at all times, and I find it frustrating. We, as parents, know they need downtime. There is a requirement for your brain to have downtime. It is an opportunity to recharge. To refocus. Plus, and I know this sounds silly, but there’s only so much capacity in that memory of ours. Kids have not yet used even 10% of their capacity, so they can keep shoving things in there. Adults are closer to 90%, and we have to do things like clean out our photos (figuratively), clean our imaginary cache and delete some old files (like those memories from Six Flags when you were seven years old). That exercise allows us to keep functioning. Kids need to look around and take in the world rather than stare at their phone. They need to know there is input to be had in the world around you. You just have to look up, rather than down. In the immortal words of the great Yogi Berra, “You can observe a lot just by watchin’”.

I tried to explain recently what “being in the moment” means. I sat with my older son and asked him to point out 5 observations of what he saw. I needed him to make connections between what he saw and “why” things were that way. At first it was hard, but he is a pretty smart kid and i knew he would get it. He was used to staring at his phone, in a 2-D world, and having things presented to him via taps and scrolls. I wanted him to take in the moment and look around to make mental connections between what was going on and why. It was an exercise in mental deduction. After about 2-3 minutes, he started to do well. He noticed the parking lot at soccer practice was empty and deduced that it was spring break, so there were fewer kids in town for practice. He looked up and noticed the field lights were starting to turn on, so dusk was approaching. I told him that observation is more than simply a matter of input. It is also a matter of safety. You have to be observing your surroundings to maintain your own personal safety. If the neanderthals had cellphones, the sabretooth tigers would have taken them all off the board. If those tigers come back, our kids are doomed. Luckily, kids’ brains are amazing and they’re all capable of leaping into the next moment, but unfortunately they find the moment too often to be “boring”.

As a parent, I get bored too, just not as often as my kids. I get bored from monotony, but some of that is a requisite of life and I’ve learned to adjust. When I’m bored, I try to look around and observe my surroundings (that, or I try to close my eyes and take advantage of those five minutes before they pass). Most of the time I’m multi-tasking to the extreme, so I’ve learned to appreciate being bored from time to time. I don’t look at my phone in those moments, but of course I was not trained at a young age to stare into my palm. I’m ok with a moment of silence. If you read self-help books, they always talk about meditation and meditation is simply taking in the moment and being present. Kids should learn to meditate, but it’s easier to get them to eat a broccoli sandwich than it is to stop and pause and meditate.

Part of what ails my kids is an innate sense of FOMO, or the fear of missing out. These kids are all about their friends, and if they aren’t engaged with them every waking minute, they assume they may have missed something. For me as an adult male, I know I miss so many things that I rarely mind anymore. My family is the most important, and my friends are a close runner up, but if I’ve learned anything in the last 10-20 years, it’s that i can always jump right back in with my best friends and we can start right up where we left off. Coming off COVID, that is even truer than ever before. For a kid, missing out is the end of the world. I get it. I was him once. I was him without the benefit of a constant connection to everyone in my pocket at all hours of the day. The temptation is always there, but our goal as parents is to instill the discipline. In his defense, when we tell him to stay off his phone, he does, but it pains him. He has good discipline, but I want him to also enjoy the time away from his phone. He’ll get there.

So what does it mean to be bored in today’s world?

I’m not sure. Being bored should be ok. Being bored means being content that right then, right where you are, is exactly where you should be, doing whatever you are doing and being ok with it. It’s ok to not be doing something, and be ok with doing nothing. You don’t need to fill every moment with more mental stimulation. You can rest assured and confidently that no input is good input at that moment. Just take it all in and enjoy.

We have a generation that needs to be taught these concepts, and I fear we are not equipped with the tools to make it happen. We are not equipped with the tools to battle FOMO one kid at a time. Or maybe we are and we’re just afraid to use them? Maybe we all just need to be reminded that where you are is where you should be.

photo accompanying this post is courtesy of UnSplash