How We Live With Boredom While Being Entertained Constantly
The more I think about it, the phone itself probably isn’t the problem. Blaming the phone is like blaming the refrigerator because you ate an entire cheesecake. The phone was just there. It’s what we’ve put inside the phone that deserves some attention, because we have become extraordinarily good at creating things that prevent us from ever having an unoccupied moment, avoiding boredom.
TikTok may be humanity’s finest achievement in this area. TikTok doesn’t even ask what you’d like to watch. It has removed that burden from your life. You open the app and TikTok basically says, “Don’t worry. We’ve been watching you. We know what you like.” Which should be terrifying. Instead we say, “Great. Show me the raccoon.”
And TikTok does. Then another raccoon. Then a guy fixing a carburetor. Then a woman explaining a murder from 1987. Then a recipe involving cream cheese that seems medically irresponsible. Then another raccoon. At no point did you request any of this. You didn’t wake up that morning thinking, “I’d really like a nice mixture of small mammals, automotive repair, unsolved homicide and dangerous amounts of dairy.” But TikTok knew.
That’s the genius of the endless scroll. There’s no ending. Books end. Movies end. Television shows end. Concerts end. Relationships end. Eventually even a trip to IKEA ends, although by that point you’re carrying a lamp you don’t remember selecting and your marriage has been tested. The scroll just keeps going.
Instagram has a slightly different purpose. Instagram lets us keep track of all the people who are currently having a better day than we are. Apparently everyone is in Italy. I don’t know when this happened. I’ll open Instagram on a Tuesday afternoon and discover that seventeen people I know are standing somewhere along the Amalfi Coast. Was there a meeting? Did I miss an email? I’m sitting at home eating leftover chicken, and apparently everyone I’ve ever met is drinking something orange beside the Mediterranean.
And everyone looks fantastic. Nobody posts a picture from the fourth day of the vacation when the family is tired, somebody has diarrhea and Dad has become irrationally angry about the hotel parking situation. I would follow that account. That’s useful travel information.
Facebook has become something entirely different. Facebook is where you keep in touch with family, remember birthdays and discover that someone you knew briefly in 1996 has developed extremely strong opinions about things. You don’t remember this person being particularly opinionated in 1996. You barely remember this person. But apparently Kevin has done his research.
Kevin has thoughts about monetary policy now. Kevin used to eat glue. But perhaps Kevin has grown. Either way, he has prepared a fourteen-paragraph post about interest rates, and somewhere underneath it two people from your graduating class are about to stop speaking to each other.
YouTube gets me in an entirely different way because YouTube doesn’t feel like wasting time. YouTube feels educational. That’s dangerous. I’ll go to YouTube because I need to know how to fix something. This is responsible adult behavior. I type “how to replace bathroom faucet,” find a seven-minute video, and feel like a capable homeowner.
An hour later I’m watching a 54-year-old man named Steve build a log cabin in northern Idaho using tools from 1883. I don’t live in Idaho. I don’t own land in Idaho. I’ve never considered building a log cabin. But Steve is about to start the chimney, and at this point I have an emotional investment. I’m not leaving Steve now. He’s done beautiful work.
Reddit is even more dangerous because Reddit contains the answer to every question you didn’t know you had. You can type almost anything into a search engine followed by the word “Reddit” and discover that hundreds of people have already spent several years discussing it. “Why does my washing machine smell weird Reddit?” Boom. There’s your community.
Four people know exactly what’s wrong. Three insist you bought the wrong washing machine. Someone recommends vinegar. Someone else says vinegar will destroy it. Two people begin arguing about front-loading machines. Then, somehow, someone blames the government. You close Reddit knowing less than when you arrived but feeling strangely involved.
And then there are news apps. I check the news several times a day, which I tell myself is because I like to remain informed. That’s probably true the first time. By the sixth time, I’m apparently just checking whether civilization is still there. It is. Excellent. I’ll check again after lunch.
Sports apps may be worse because sports have the audacity to happen slowly. Baseball is particularly troublesome. I’ll check the Red Sox score: 3–2. I’ll put the phone down, thirty seconds will pass, and I’ll check again. Still 3–2. What did I think was going to happen? It’s baseball. The pitcher may still be looking at the catcher. Nevertheless, apparently I need visual confirmation.
But perhaps the strangest thing is that the phone itself knows exactly what we’re doing. Every week my iPhone sends me a Screen Time report, and I hate this feature. “Your screen time was up 14% last week.” I don’t remember asking for a performance review from my telephone.
It’s especially irritating because the phone was there the entire time. It participated. You can’t spend all week saying, “Hey, look at this. Somebody liked something. Breaking news. The Red Sox are losing. Someone you barely remember has a birthday,” and then show up Sunday morning wearing little imaginary glasses like an accountant. “Chris, we need to discuss your numbers.”
You were my dealer. Now you’re my therapist? The phone will even suggest that perhaps I should reduce my screen time. That’s rich. This is like a bartender sliding your eighth beer across the counter and saying, “You know, you should really think about drinking less.” Maybe I should, Gary, but you’re sending some mixed signals.
The remarkable part is that we have done all of this because, apparently, at some point we collectively decided that boredom was unacceptable. Not merely unpleasant, but something requiring immediate intervention. Waiting for the dentist? Phone. Waiting for coffee? Phone. Sitting on the toilet? Phone. Watching television? Somehow, also phone.
That last one is particularly impressive because we’re already being entertained. We’re sitting six feet away from a 65-inch television containing professional actors who have spent months and millions of dollars attempting to hold our attention, and halfway through the show our brain decides, “This is good, but I wonder what strangers are doing.”
So we check. Someone made tacos. Excellent. Back to the murder mystery. Wait, what happened? Rewind. Check the phone during the rewind. Miss it again. At some point you have to admire the efficiency.
We’ve managed to turn watching television into a task requiring two screens, three attempts and a recap from the person sitting next to us who was also on their phone. Nobody knows who killed the victim, but we all saw the tacos.