Slashdot Mirror
Why It's Bad That Smartphones Have Banished Boredom
Hugh Pickens writes "Doug Gross writes that thanks to technology, there's been a recent sea change in how people today kill time. 'Those dog-eared magazines in your doctor's office are going unread. Your fellow customers in line at the deli counter are being ignored. And simply gazing around at one's surroundings? Forget about it.' With their games, music, videos, social media and texting, smartphones 'superstimulate,' a desire humans have to play when things get dull, says anthropologist Christopher Lynn and he believes that modern society may be making that desire even stronger. 'When you're habituated to constant stimulation, when you lack it, you sort of don't know what to do with yourself,' says Lynn. 'When we aren't used to having down time, it results in anxiety. 'Oh my god, I should be doing something.' And we reach for the smartphone. It's our omnipresent relief from that.' Researchers say this all makes sense. Fiddling with our phones, they say, addresses a basic human need to cure boredom by any means necessary. But they also fear that by filling almost every second of down time by peering at our phones we are missing out on the creative and potentially rewarding ways we've dealt with boredom in days past. 'Informational overload from all quarters means that there can often be very little time for personal thought, reflection, or even just 'zoning out,'" researchers write. 'With a mobile (phone) that is constantly switched on and a plethora of entertainments available to distract the naked eye, it is understandable that some people find it difficult to actually get bored in that particular fidgety, introspective kind of way.'"
I think they may have a point. Every time I go for a dump, I take my phone with me and have a quick dash around with Temple Run
Sometimes though, it's just a quick dash with the runs
Watch those corners
Why is reading a crappy magazine in the doctor's office more productive than using your smartphone? I hate when people spew opinions like this without showing at least ONE piece of data/evidence that using a smartphone is more harmful than the alternative (the other things we do when we're bored).
And didn't people make the same arguments about television? And then, later, about videogames?
Slashdot leaps to mind...
I can remember waiting awkwardly in line with other people with nothing more to do then stare at some advertisement or products around me. I, and certainly no one around me, wanted to start up a random stranger dialogue and shoot the shit. This alone caused me to be anxious. I hated waiting because I didn't know what to do, shuffle shuffle shuffle, hands in pockets, out of pockets, sigh, yawn... shuffle.
I welcome the soft glow of my phone. It makes DMV, Passport agency, and anything in a municipal building _just a bit better_. Likely a few years from now an anthropologist will do a study about how fewer people are going 'postal' while waiting in line for some bureaucracy. How after waiting in line a few hours, the ability to play angry birds kept them from thinking about how much money they were going to be docked when they got back to work. It just may save someone's life.
Also, lets not drone on about this 'habitual stimulation' always being entertainment. I see people on the subway who somehow manage to play games and watch videos, but I see just as many reading. Not to say reading can't be entertainment ( or that games and video can't be learning tools ). Just grouping everything people do with their smartphones into 'entertainment' is wrong.
tl;dr: anthropologist overreacts.
-Malakai
A Dragon Lives in my Garage
It's called a Portable PC -- AKA Laptop / Notebook. Instead of fucking around with those damn consumtion centric smart phones and tablet devices I use a fully functional portable computer instead. I can make phone calls with it too (even better: Hands Free Video Chat), but typically I just use a cheap dumb "feature" phone for voice. If I can't compile my C programs on it, it's a worthless toy that I don't need. I've tried installing Debian on an Android Tablet, got a stand and portable bluetooth keyboard working... Then I realized how assinine it was to NOT be using a Laptop instead. Yeah it weighs a little bit more than a phone, and is slightly more cumbersome to cary than a purse, but I've got a messenger bag anyway and I'm not a fucking wimp.
Not that I don't have the constant urge to be doing something -- I do, that sense of urgency is due to my limited 70-100yr lifespan. What I do to "kill time" is actually creative. When the urge strikes I make something, or jot notes on how to realize the idea later. I'm just as habitually a creator as most smartphone "addicts" are media consumers. The difference between me and smart phone users is that I don't whip out my laptop while I'm supposed to be socializing at a restaurant -- Oh, that would be rude... Protip: I think it's just as rude when you smartphone users do that.
I get a lot of my most useful ideas in the shower. So lets hope they don't make a waterproof phone or I will stop innovating all together.
Just go out for a walk whenever you need to gather your thoughts and zone out for a bit. Touchscreens and walking don't mix...
This tip works great until you get to the point where you subscribe to a large enough number of podcasts that there's always a queue lined up for you in your podcast player. If you're like me you can still zone out or let your mind drift a bit during the boring parts of the podcasts. Also, obviously, if you go out for a walk without your headset you commit to not listening to podcasts or music.
When I started my meditation practice I was a full blown smart-phone addict. One of the hardest earliest barriers to get over was the idea of sitting idle for 30 minutes. Somehow mindlessly browsing reddit was okay but just sitting and watching my breath was not. I'd get flooded with all kinds of thoughts about how I should be doing something productive and typically that was accompanied by anxiety.
At some point I had to stop and ask myself, who exactly do I think is judging my behavior? Why do I even feel like I need to justify what I'm doing with my personal time? Of course the realization came that it was all me, all my mind, and I let go of the habit.
Now I meditate regularly and still use my smart phone. I look forward to sitting and knowing I get time to just be. I'm comfortable with that and reap the benefits. I'm significantly less stressed during the day and my mind is calmer. I understand myself and my actions better. I still use the phone, but sometimes I don't. Sometimes it's nice to just be with your own mind.
I wouldn't say smartphones have only banished boredom though. They, like many of our modern baubles, have also lowered the bar for when boredom sets in.
An aside I feel is related I can't remember the last time I had a good meaningful conversation with a group of friends or even one on one. Hell, even meaningless conversation with depth seems to have left. It seems like on average things are being reduced to one or two sentences on a topic and topics which require multiple layers of thinking just don't come up.
I find it paradoxical as someone who was a loner in school I can look at my life now and see more friends, supportive family, great co-workers, technology like facebook, SMS, and smart phones to be always connected and yet I feel more alone than I ever have. I feel lacking in community.
A classic example is the Kalman Filter. Devised by Kalman while he was waiting in a train station. We may not have that innovation today if he'd had an iPhone.
Sometimes he felt the need to take it out and hide from the real world.
Always in his pocket, the temptation grew stronger and stronger.
I know a number of people who must have a TV going, no matter how mindless whatever show is that's on. I'm sure they probably have infomercials going at 2 in the morning. I always assumed that if they didn't have constant inane chatter going, they might actually start thinking and realize their own mortality or the meaninglessness of their lives or something. If you get one of these people someplace that doesn't have a TV, they will just natter on. If you want to make them really uncomfortable, just grin and don't say anything when they wind down, and watch them start to fidget! Just about the time they open their mouth to say something else, ask them what they're so afraid of. That freaks them out!
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Stop telling people what to do.
Who's telling you what to do?
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
If your cell phone is a "distraction" all the time, you're using it wrong. Not that having a distraction from time to time is a bad thing. Still, my phone is a tool to get things done, which allows me to do more of what I want to do. Between work and my hobby/social activities, I probably have the equivalent of three pre-smart-phone full time jobs, and almost nothing gets lost or dropped or forgotten.
I still have "down time," it just gets interrupted less by all those nagging items I used to have to keep track of manually. My down time is of a higher quality now.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Unfortunately, the 18-year-old is so preoccupied with responding to text messages on her phone and posting to Facebook on her iPad that she can't read this article, answer a simple question or have a normal conversation. I am not exaggerating. She comes to see me because I have internet service and Wi-Fi. She drives, but I'm not sure how. Every time I try to engage her to discuss something important, the phone beeps and she has to leave to see someone. She has a minimum wage job and the other day she announced she was getting an iPhone. Cell phone companies have done a great job convincing poor people that they need $100/mo cell phones when they can barely afford a place to live or pay for medical expenses. I fear her mind is gone.
Sorry, but gray text on gray background is making my eyes bleed.
I ride a lot on commuter trains, and I notice that most folks who are talking on the phone really aren't saying anything. But many seem to have a fear of not talking on the phone. As soon as they end one call, they call someone else, to talk about what they talked about on the last call. When they lose their connection, they break out in a sweaty panic.
It reminds me of little kids, who get afraid and cry when their parents leave to room. The kids have a feeling of being abandoned: that their parents will be gone forever. It's almost the same way with folks with phones now. If they are not talking on the phone, they lose their lifeline to this universe, and will cease to exist.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
I'll do what I want. I don't care what you used to do in the olden days. If you want to be bored, go for it.
It's like people whining about magazines closing. Apparently one is closing now, in the UK. Some people are signing a petition. Who are they going to present it to? I bet hardly any of them actually bought it.
Agreed. I bet there was the same argument about 50 years ago about broadcast TV. "Kids these days, instead of staring out the window (a pastime that served us well for centuries!) all they do is flip on the TV and bang, they aren't bored any more! Windows will go un-stared-out! The humanity!"
Look, there are always things to do and adults can always make decisions on what they want to do and when. If it's so horrible that people aren't bored, the ones who figure out that boredom is some sort of innate marketable skill will rise to the top and become our new overlords. Until then, it's business as usual.
Well, by many accounts, we *do* have an obesity epidemic. Are you going to say that tv and in-house entertainment has nothing to do with that?
No one is telling you what to do. They're just positing the idea that it's hurtful to you. But I guess you'd prefer that they do not study and contemplate things like this, and get back to playing games on their iPads.
its not about tellng you what to do. its about suggesting that the phone gives a false sense of productivity. Equivalent to "empty calories". Being bored leads to wanting to do things. The phone satisfies that, without actually being productive, since the chief way of occupying time with a phone is with a game of some kind. The suggestion is that without the phone you would do something else more worthwhile with that small bit of time. That the game on your phone is a more compelling boredom relief than many other activities, yet in the end less rewarding than those other activities.
Remember we arent talking about life goals or long stretches of time, but small chunks that used to be filled by introspection or conversation. Staring out the window on a bus (the "greatest philosphy school known to mankind"). Waiting for an order at a diner. Waiting for the dentist. Etc. The trend now, I know you've seen it, a group of friends at a restruant out to eat, no one saying a word, everyone just staring at their phone. They're there together, yet each alone.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
It's not so much that as pool size and opportunity. The whole "nice guys finish last" thing has a subversion: those guys hanging out with extremely bored, cute girls might not have the easiest time getting laid, but when there's fuck-all to do they just start snuggling up on anyone they're fairly comfortable with. You don't need to push the right buttons anymore; you just need to not push the wrong ones.
In other words, bored girls are a heck of a lot looser than occupied girls. Girls generally don't have sex every chance they get; courtship is hard.
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I like to ask my kids- what would have happened to the United States if Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin were hooked on watching The Amazing Race or playing Angry Birds instead of reading history and writing the constitution? That couldn't happen to such smart guys, you say? What if they had been trained from early childhood to just sit and watch whatever was on the TV or to play twitch games instead of doing something constructive?
When I was a kid I built a lot of models, rewired telephones and I watched Star Trek. One scene that helped define my life was when Spock was apparently staring off into space, and Kirk asked: "Shouldn't you be working on that warp implosion equation?" (or something like that) To which Spock replied with utmost confidence, "I am."
I was so impressed with that, that I started looking for problems to solve and solving them in my head -- things like calculating the length of a train based on my speed in the car, the train's speed and how long it took our car to overtake it (this required having my dad match the speed of the train and then drop back far enough to accelerate to a steady speed to overtake it. Good thing I had accommodating parents!) I got so good at this kind of thing that I failed a math test (multiplying matrices) in High School. "But I got all the answers right." I confidently told the teacher. "Yes, but you didn't show any work, at all. There are only answers here. You obviously copied someone else's paper." I reminded her that I was the first to tun mine in, by a long shot. She begrudgingly gave me the 100%.
You can imagine that this skill helped out tremendously in software development.
All I have to say is, if you ever get bored, ever, then you're not doing it right, even if you don't have anything to play with but your wits. Temple run? I tried it once. Once. Boooooooring!
Is while car pooling, the driver pulling out his smartphone and dicking around with it, eyes not on the road, barrelling along at 80 mph, in moose country, in the dark. Makes one appreciate not car pooling and just driving myself to work alone.
You do know that killing someone in self defence is not a crime? Get the fucker to pull over and remove his head with your weapon of choice. You are just stopping him from killing you.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Why is this story tagged science? I RTFA, and I didn't see any science there. I see an opinion piece from an anthropologist, without a shred of actual science attached to it. No studies, no control group, no data, nothing.
Really? And where are the psychological studies to back this up? Neurological data? I thought not. Typical ivory tower "publish or perish" piece crapped out by the soft "sciences".