PracticallyPsychology

Stop distracting yourself, it’s forbidden!

What happens when we do nothing? We feel bored and…..we do something. Most often, we distract ourselves, we get lost in distractions, lose this listless discomfort! And then…do it all over again. Wash, rinse, repeat. Think about it!

You know that feeling when you’re just sitting there, staring at the wall, or maybe zoning out while a video game’s still flickering in the background, and you’re like… “Ugh, I’m bored”? Yeah, it feels kinda of pointless, right? Like dead air in your brain. But here’s the weird twist: psychologists are actually saying boredom isn’t just this empty, useless thing. It’s more like an alarm bell, a signal that your brain is screaming, “Hey, I need something new. Change it up.”

And this isn’t just speculation. There’s this study out of Texas A and M, led by Dr. Heather Lench, with some collaboration from Dr. Shane Bench at Utah State University Eastern. They basically dug deep into boredom and came back with a really counterintuitive point: boredom doesn’t just push us toward pleasure, it pushes us toward anything different, even if it sucks. Like, you’re bored, and suddenly eating something gross or taking some random risk feels better than just sitting there in the void.

Lench put it really clearly. She said, “When we feel bored, we want change, even if that change is unpleasant. It’s about feeling something new, whether that is positive or negative.” So, boredom is like this inner shove to get us unstuck. And when you think about it from an evolutionary perspective, it makes sense. If our ancestors were just chilling, doing nothing for too long, they might have missed opportunities, resources, or even threats. Boredom evolved to keep us moving, curious, maybe even reckless, but definitely not stagnant.

Now, here’s where it gets kind of funny-slash-scary. That drive for novelty? It can go in two directions. On the one hand, boredom can spark creativity, focus, productivity like when you finally write that poem, paint that wall, or start a new project. But it can also steer people into risky stuff: addictions, bad decisions, drugs, reckless behaviors. It all depends on how someone handles the state of being bored. Some people channel it into building or exploring, others spiral into frustration or self-blame, or they start looking for thrill in dangerous places.

And that’s why this study redefines boredom not as this passive emptiness but as a functional emotion a real psychological mechanism. Lench even said it explains some of those “puzzling behaviors” we see all the time, where people make choices that look completely irrational, almost like they’re sabotaging themselves. But really, they’re just driven by this deeper craving to feel something different.

Here’s a detail from their experiments that blew my mind: in the third study, they set things up so people got bored by either positive or negative stimuli. Like, they were literally tired of good vibes or sick of negative vibes. And what happened? People who were bored with positivity actually sought out negative experiences, while people bored with negativity went looking for positive ones. That flips the whole pleasure principle on its head. It’s not about moving toward happiness, it’s about moving away from monotony.

And Dr. Lench summed it up really well our brains crave stimulation. If things get too routine, or feel irrelevant to our goals, boredom is like, “Shift gears. Now.” Even if the shift takes you into something unpleasant.

So yeah, boredom is powerful. But here’s the twist: that was just the psychologist’s perspective. Over on the philosophy side of things, there’s another take that gets a lot deeper like existential-depth deep. And I think this is where boredom gets really interesting.

So let’s bring in Martin Heidegger, the German philosopher who, let’s be honest, isn’t usually the guy you’d expect to help with TikTok burnout. But his whole framework around technology and Being actually nails what’s going on with our overstimulated lives.

Heidegger argued that modern technology isn’t just a bunch of tools. It’s a way of revealing the world shaping how we see everything, including ourselves. And in today’s digital culture, that “revealing” is dominated by speed, visibility, algorithms, and the compulsive push for content. Life basically starts to mirror the feed: always updating, always now, allergic to slowness or silence.

And here’s the problem: what all that noise takes away isn’t just our attention it’s the deeper reflection. The ability to sit in silence, to face an unfilled moment, to actually reflect on life or ourselves. We lose the capacity for real stillness. And when silence does show up, what do we do? We grab the phone. We look around for distraction, not for connection, but just to not feel the emptiness. Heidegger called this pull “das Man,” or “the they” this ghostly collective we all kind of fall into. We copy trends, follow likes, and let algorithms set the rhythm. It’s comforting, but it erases individuality.

That’s where boredom comes in again. Heidegger saw boredom, especially what he called “profound boredom,” as this privileged mood, a doorway to seeing Being itself. In his 1929 to 1930 lecture series The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics, he described it as the moment when everything people, objects, even yourself just sort of withdraws into indifference. Sounds depressing, but what he meant was: in that space, reality itself reveals something deeper. Boredom isn’t just absence, it’s a threshold. It clears the table so meaning has room to appear.

Now think about that compared to digital life. Today we treat boredom like a disease. It’s shameful. We hate it, avoid it, patch it instantly with scrolling or background noise. What disappears in that process isn’t just quiet time. It’s the metaphysical access, the chance for depth. And Heidegger was worried about this long before smartphones existed he called it the “forgetting of being.” In our time, it looks like losing boredom itself, and with it, losing the pause, the reflection, the authentic “I.”

So while the psychologists are saying boredom drives novelty and sometimes risk, Heidegger’s basically saying: without boredom, we lose ourselves. Both sides kind of line up in a way boredom is necessary. It’s not just something to fill. It’s a signal and also a doorway.

And then there’s another perspective that ties these threads together in a really personal way this idea that boredom is actually vital for creativity. There’s this story someone told about going on a ten day Vipassana retreat. That’s one of those silent meditation marathons: ten hours a day sitting, no talking, no phones, no books, not even a notebook to scribble in. Total cut off. If you want a modern test of boredom tolerance, that’s it.

The person who went said they didn’t remember being crushed by boredom back then, but looking back now, in a world where every spare moment is hijacked by scrolling, they feel like they’d never be able to do it again. And that reaction itself says a lot. It’s like we’ve lost the muscle for stillness. They even described boredom as a kind of nourishment for the brain something we used to just slip into naturally in downtime: walking to school, waiting for a friend, sitting in traffic. Those little pauses are gone now, paved over with TikTok clips, endless feeds, and notifications.

And here’s the darker twist: boredom has been commodified. Platforms and algorithms literally detect when your attention dips and hit you with fresh content engineered to pull you back in. What used to be a natural pause for inner reflection has been turned into a marketplace for your attention. Boredom isn’t allowed to breathe anymore.

That’s where the creativity angle comes in. The author pointed out that constant digital distraction doesn’t just steal time, it threatens our creative instincts. There’s this quote from Drew Haller’s piece, “Killing Counterculture,” saying if media only rewards speed and virality, then what we need to do is the opposite. Slow down, prioritize depth, and defend creativity as something more than just instant content.

And honestly, that connects perfectly with both psychology and philosophy. On the psychological side, boredom pushes you toward new experiences and if you can harness that in a positive direction, you get art, invention, innovation. On the philosophical side, boredom is the threshold where real reflection and depth emerge. And in everyday life, boredom used to be just… everywhere. In line at the grocery store, sitting on the bus, lying in bed before sleep. Those were the moments where ideas could grow.

Now, most of us feel almost allergic to boredom. We avoid it so fast we don’t even realize what we’re giving up. But if you look at what the studies say, and what thinkers like Heidegger warned about, and what people notice in their own creative lives, it’s clear boredom isn’t something to escape. It’s something to reclaim.

So yeah, boredom feels uncomfortable. Sometimes it even pushes us toward risky or dumb choices. But if we sit with it really let it arrive it can open up new paths, spark creativity, or even connect us with something deeper about ourselves.