Ask anyone over forty about childhood summers and many will describe long, empty afternoons. Nothing to watch, nobody around, nothing scheduled. They will also describe what they did with that time: built forts, read whatever books were in the house, invented games, took things apart. Boredom was the starting point.
The disappearing afternoon
Today, an empty minute is rare for anyone, children included. Phones and tablets fill every gap: the car ride, the waiting room, the line at the store. Parents, understandably, reach for the screen to keep the peace. Many children now go from school to activities to screens with almost no unstructured time at all.
What boredom does
Researchers have taken boredom more seriously in recent years. In a widely cited 2014 study, psychologists Sandi Mann and Rebekah Cadman at the University of Central Lancashire had participants do a dull task, copying numbers from a phone book, before a creativity test. The bored participants came up with more creative ideas than a control group. The researchers suggested that boredom pushes the mind to wander, and daydreaming can lead to new ideas.
Boredom is also a signal. It tells us that what we are doing is not meaningful enough, and nudges us to look for something better. If that feeling is instantly smothered by a video, the nudge never comes.
Not a cure-all
Chronic boredom is not good for anyone, and it has been linked to poor mental health and risky behavior in teenagers. The point is not to make children miserable. It is to leave some room in the day that adults do not fill.
A modest proposal
Try it: one afternoon a week with no screens and no plans. Expect complaints for the first hour. Then watch what happens. The fort, the comic strip, the made-up game: those come from the empty time, not in spite of it.
Sources: Mann & Cadman, “Does Being Bored Make Us More Creative?”, Creativity Research Journal (2014); The upside of boredom, American Psychological Association; Media and Children, American Academy of Pediatrics.
