The Boooring Affliction of Sameness

"The problem we observed was that social media can alleviate superficial boredom but that distraction sucks up time and energy and may prevent people progressing to a state of profound boredom, where they might discover new passions."

"This research has given us a window to understand how the 'always-on', 24/7 culture and devices that promise an abundance of information and entertainment may be fixing our superficial boredom but are actually preventing us from finding more meaningful things."

"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."

Dr. Timothy Hill, associate professor, management marketing, business and society, Bath, U.K.

 

"I felt empty, an emptiness that was difficult to escape from. The longer I was bored, the worse I felt about myself.":

"But one positive thing is that it made me take on new things to escape that empty feeling."

Richard, study participant

(Mindful Media/Getty Images)

Social media researchers are turning to a shared theory of boredom being a psychological spur to turning people toward exploring means by which they can enrich their experiences to stave off boredom. And, they contend, it takes extreme levels of boredom to propel people in the direction of taking steps to relieve that deep sense of monotony. If they seek instead minor or surface distractions, they may still harbour a level of boredom, but of insufficient depth to convince them they should be looking for ways to alleviate the discomfort.

 

Mindless scrolling on social media, viewing videos to briefly instill a sense of interest, following threads, all have a way of preventing "profound boredom" from being mounted, leaving the time-spendthrift feeling only minimally to marginally bored, a condition that while irritating, appears manageable by searching out other, similarly mindless pursuits, unsatisfying in their outcome but preventing the buildup of acute boredom with its potential to trigger a search for meaningful pursuits.

 

Creative thought is not conducive through 'superficial boredom', warn experts. Fifteen people were interviewed by researchers at the University of Bath during the pandemic, a time they would be likelier to be bored -- when normal life became straitened as a result of restrictions imposed to protect people from runaway infection from the SARS-CoV-2 virus. 

The interview subjects described feeling trapped in a monotony of daily walks, watching television broken only by supermarket shopping. To pass the time people turned increasingly to the distractions inherent in social media. Despite social media providing temporary escape from superficial boredom, participants reported it also seemed to exacerbate boredom. They were left feeling their time had been wasted.

 

People peruse smartphones and tablets at the Apple Store on Fifth Avenue in New York City

Jose Antonio Maciel/Moment Editorial/Getty Images

 

German ph8ilosopher Martin Heidegger identified the two levels of boredom; superficial and profound; the former as being the most common form of boredom; the feeling people are infused with when awaiting something expected has been delayed. During such times people automatically seek out temporary distractions, most frequently turning to cellphones and social media. A trait that prevents the state of profound boredom being reached.

Profound boredom is considered a level of malaise, its importance as an impetus in the creation of an "existential discomfort", challenging the sense of self, to ultimately convince people to exert themselves to improve the situation they find themselves in. Study interviewees reported that they were led to question their purpose and life choices when they fell into profound boredom. Leading them to explore new interests as an escape from that void.

Professor Hill spoke of a "digital detox", helpful to people when they switch off devices, enabling them to reach the state of required tedium to push themselves on to new interests or achievements. The study was published in the journal Marketing Theory, by researchers from the University of Bath and Trinity College Dublin. Dr. Hill was the lead investigator.

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Bored? Get Smart!

"Boredom is sort of an emotional dashboard light that goes off saying like: 'Hey, you're not on track'."

"[Boredom is a warning sign that says, it's] really necessary."

"I think boredom gets a bad rap that's not deserved. [Boredom] is linked to a lot of what most of us want out of life, like living a rich, fulfilling, interesting, meaningful life."

"Boredom is just one sort of helpful signal -- maybe unwanted signal -- that helps us get there."

Erin Westgate, social psychologist, University of Florida

Getty Images

 

Dr. Westgate and colleagues found in a 2021 study that participants were led by boredom toward sadistic behaviour. One experiment with bored participants viewing a mundane 20-minute video showed them to be more likely to do something that it was presumed none had ever considered doing before. They took to shredding maggots with names the researchers gave them to 'humanize' the maggots in the minds of the study participants: Toto, Tifi and Kiki.

 

A psychological play to appeal to their consciences that failed to produce desired results, under the influence of boredom for some of the participants. Of 67 study participants who had watched the boring video, a dozen, representing 18 percent of the total, dropped a maggot into a coffee grinder. Just one out of 62 study participants in another group viewing an interesting documentary turned to shredding a maggot. Although the study participants had no knowledge of this, the maggots didn't mind that the grinding machine was faked.

 

A link was proven between boredom and various types of bad behaviour ranging from online trolling, to bullying in the classroom, to verbal and physical abuse by members of the military toward one another in other experiments. Boredom, it was confirmed, does not always make people surrender to our meaner instincts; it merely calls upon us to take action whether it is deigned to be good or bad. When good alternatives are present boredom also can convince people to perform good deeds.

 

In conclusion it seemed that research pointed in the direction that boredom appears to motivate people to search for novelty situations to staunch the boredom and raise interest levels. Having distractions to entice one away from boredom can often mean resorting to favoured topics having the effect of moving distant from feeling bored. Ten adults were placed in an fMRI brain scanner to measure brain activity as they watched either a clip from the nature documentary Planet Earth, a video of two men hanging laundry, or a static image.

This experiment initiated by James Danckert, a cognitive neuroscientist at the University of Waterloo and his colleagues, featured  the boring laundry video, the documentary or the men hanging laundry, spurred the brain's default mode network to activation; a constellation of brain regions active during internal thought, similar to someone's mind wandering. The anterior insular cortex, a region of the brain believed to signal something important happening in the outside world, shut down as a result of the boring video.

When personal agency is temporarily withdrawn people are most likely to be bored, and that often occurs at work or in school where situations arise where less autonomy presents and fewer options to remedy the emotion are present. Boredom is the mind's way of informing us that something is not quite right, but what to do about it, is not a feature of boredom. It is up to the individual to find useful measures to defeat boredom.

James Danckert, speaks pf people automatically trying to dispel boredom by turning to an iPhone for interest; yet he points out that decision is not particularly meaningful and could lead to a return to boredom. In the search of alternatives more meaningful, he recommends scrutinizing goals, large and small. Boredom, and the search for relief from it, is an essential part of our human experience points out Dr.Danckert.