Excellent points! As a 79 year-old with only a flip phone (which I only use when I absolutely need to) I still spend half my time in front of screens. What to do with the other half? Aerobic exercise (with NO electronic distractions), chatting with my wife, reading, working puzzles, listening to music especially the 19th century sort that allows my mind to wander, meditating, napping, chores around the house, petting the cat, looking out the window... and that lifestyle has left me creative to a fault and generally satisfied. So go thou and do likewise!
This reminds me of a man I knew that quit smoking. The watershed moment came when he simply realized "Why do I have to smoke a cigarette on my walk through the parking lot to my car?"
So he stopped, and eventually cut out smoking entirely by first focusing on those interstitial moments.
I had a similar experience when I was addicted to smart phones and social media a few years ago. I found myself grabbing my phone during times when my phone was unnecessary. As a new mom, this often meant my phone was in my hand the moment my son didn't need my immediate attention. What we both lost during that time can never be returned, but I try to give myself grace. I quit, at least.
I'd like to see the return of sacred boredom spaces. Lines, red lights, hospital waiting rooms, restaurants, the bathroom. Like realizing that the afterwork cigarette does not need to happen in the parking lot, I wish we all as a society could agree that some places are sacred, that some places are meant for boredom.
I had a quote on my notebook in junior high. I don't know who said it, probably an offhand remark from a pop idol in a teen magazine, but the quote was "Boredom is an excellent motivator."
I repeat this to my son whenever he complains of boredom. He hates it, he hates it with an intensity that helps me know I am on the right track. He hates it so much I know he's internalized it and will repeat it during interstitial moments in his 30's.
Excellent article, I have a new book on my TBR and a new idea to think about for the rest of the day.
Superb discussion of the importance of "interstitial time". As someone who does not own a cell phone, I enjoy the waiting moments where I simply sit (or stand in line), think, look at people and things around me. It creates snippets of mind silence that help slow down a hurried pace.
Another aspect that could be added to the list of benefits presented here, is the formation of memories. If we spend time simply "being bored", we have time to replay conversations, events, etc. in our mind, a process that gets interrupted if we turn to our phones instead.
And when our kids don't have screens to turn toward in those moments, they learn to take pleasure in these quiet gaps.
As a Boomer, I grew up getting to know boredom in ways described in this piece (I have also read “The Extinction of Experience” which affirmed the interstitial paths on which I walked and daydreamed—and still do, but not without the intentional abandonment of digital distractions).
I grew up in a house that was a quarter mile from a river. Whenever I felt bored or addled or in some state of unresolved conflict (with parents or peers), I would walk to an abandoned ferry landing to sit and watch the quiet flow of that broad and beautiful body of water. Within ten to twenty minutes I was calm and at peace with my imperfect life (not realizing that this routine would be called mindfulness years later). Spending time at the river, living on my grandmother’s Kentucky farm during the summer (with no TV or electronic gadgets), and being exposed to the wild world of fields and animals rooted me inside fallow time that wasn’t measured in minutes or hours.
I appreciate Rosen’s work on why and how to reclaim and re-embody our lives—and to help our children and grandchildren to know boredom as a simple gift that keeps on giving.
This fantastic article put into words my main motivation for switching to a flip phone. During my decade+ of smartphone ownership, I had a nagging sense that my habit of picking up my phone in every spare moment of downtime was destroying something in me, but I couldn't stop doing it. Now that I have a flip phone, the option of scrolling to flee boredom has been taken away (at least while I'm out of the house/away from my laptop!) and it's been a game changer for my creativity, patience, and also my overall mood.
Good for you, Christina. I also made that switch back about 6 years ago. It's a pain occasionally, but I'm happy with my flip phone.
I think life is like lifeguarding: long periods of boredom followed by a few minutes of excitement. Sure, the phone can bring a simulacrum of nearly nonstop excitement, but since you're not paying attention to reality anymore, you'll miss the far better excitement of the real world.
(Not to mention that the human brain is not equipped to handle the non-stop cortisol or dopamine that the phone provides.)
Also, Dr Seuss as usual has the best retort to a child's complaint of boredom (from Oh the Thinks You Can Think):
"You can think up some birds. That's what you can do. You can think about yellow or think about blue."
We now quote this at our kids whenever they say they don't know what to do (they find it highly irritating...but then they do go figure out what to do!)
This year for Lent I chose to abstain from cell phone use except for texting and calls...basically use my smart phone like a flip phone. Those six weeks of abstinence allowed me to break the habit of mindlessly picking it up to endlessly scroll. I have my interstitial moments back that used to be sucked up by phone-gazing. It is such a welcome relief to not feel constantly co-opted by my phone. A game-changer for real.
Rosen’s reflections on the psychological costs of constant connectivity are insightful, but her analysis suffers from an elite lens that assumes everyone has the time, freedom, and autonomy to embrace boredom. The examples she offers—waiting at stoplights, resisting the urge to check a phone in a doctor’s office, letting children “go outside and play”—all presuppose a level of stability and security that many Americans, particularly working-class families, don’t enjoy. For a single parent juggling jobs or a gig worker navigating multiple platforms to survive, a smartphone isn’t just a toy or crutch—it’s a lifeline.
The romanticism of a “pre-digital” world also reflects a narrow slice of experience—those who had safe neighborhoods, structured school days, and the luxury of analog leisure. That past never belonged to the working poor, and it still doesn’t. Calls to "reclaim idleness" are hollow if you can’t afford unstructured time.
Most tellingly, Rosen fails to hold elite tech architects accountable. The digital attention economy wasn’t built from the bottom up—it was designed and monetized by Silicon Valley insiders, marketed aggressively to parents, and normalized in elite institutions. Yet the burden of reform, in Rosen’s telling, falls disproportionately on individual families—especially parents—rather than the cultural gatekeepers who fueled this transformation.
If we’re serious about reclaiming the human goods of patience, creativity, and reflection, then reform must start with those who set the pace: tech executives, elite educators, and media tastemakers. They’ve long sold distraction as innovation—now they should be the first to unplug.
In the car with my daughter yesterday, we were talking about whether there's a correlation between various traits in animals and their lifespan. We spent 4-5 minutes speculating about this, and neither of us once pulled out our smartphones and said, "Hey Google..." (I don't own a smartphone and none of us are accustomed to doing that.)
Instant information and lack of boredom doesn't just make it impossible to daydream. It makes thinking itself harder, since thinking requires time to answer questions you're internally asking yourself. If your response to any question is to immediately ask Google, you've effectively stopped thinking.
We may have more information at our fingertips than ever before, but increasingly we have less knowledge in our brains. And when it comes to thinking (and dreaming and creativity), knowledge is what matters. Good thing we have AI to be creative for us now. :-)
“Instead of the daily encounters that enable communities to sustain a common life, random collections of solitary people are protected from each other.... Rather than connecting in troublesome relationships, they are turning to cyber-companions for frictionless friendship and virtual sex. The contingencies of living in a material world are being swapped for an algorithmic dreamtime. The end-point is self-enclosure in the Matrix – a loss of the definitively human experience of living as a fleshly, mortal creature..... the defiant smile in the face of cruel absurdity, the glance that began a love that changed us forever, a tune it seemed would always be with us, tears in the rain.”
Daydreaming and boredom are both important. Being off the phone is what encourages both to happen. I miss the days of chatting with strangers while waiting in line and doing other "boring" activities. No wonder so many people are lonely and don't know how to socialize. Quite sad.
As a member of the pre-smartphone generation (69 years old), I have a couple books to recommend that really sent this message home - even before all this solid, newer research. They certainly drove our parental decision to keep only one computer in a central location (same with TV) and to postpone mobile phones until each kid turned 16. (Both kids, now in their early 30's, express gratitude for doing so, often comparing their rather minimal use with that of their over-connected peers.)
1) The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future (AKA: Don't Trust Anyone Under 30), 2009, by Mark Bauerlein. He has published an update by the same name, 2022.
2) Hamlet's Blackberry: A Practical Philosophy for Building a Good Life in the Digital Age , by William Powers. A beautiful philosophical exploration of the expected and unexpected consequences of technology through the ages.
Every time I see a kid with a phone at a dinner table or a tablet while sitting in a car, I can't help but think how they are being robbed. How will they ever cultivate an imagination or creativity if they are constantly fed? We have a 4-year-old, and raising them without these things is not hard. Our parents did it, and so forth. Parenting is not supposed to be outsourced to devices.
This speaks directly to something I’ve felt but struggled to name, the erosion of those sacred in-between spaces where creativity and self-connection are born. As a photographer and writer, I’ve come to realise that my best ideas don’t arrive when I’m trying, but in the quiet gaps: stirring a pot, walking without music, staring out the window while my files export. The death of daydreaming feels like a spiritual loss, not just a cognitive one. Thank you for naming this with such clarity and care and for reminding us that the reclamation of boredom might just be one of the most radical acts of our time.
Figuratively speaking, imagine if Newton was too busy watching cat videos on TikTok to contemplate why an apple falls from a tree...
What if they were videos of cats falling out of trees?
Excellent points! As a 79 year-old with only a flip phone (which I only use when I absolutely need to) I still spend half my time in front of screens. What to do with the other half? Aerobic exercise (with NO electronic distractions), chatting with my wife, reading, working puzzles, listening to music especially the 19th century sort that allows my mind to wander, meditating, napping, chores around the house, petting the cat, looking out the window... and that lifestyle has left me creative to a fault and generally satisfied. So go thou and do likewise!
This reminds me of a man I knew that quit smoking. The watershed moment came when he simply realized "Why do I have to smoke a cigarette on my walk through the parking lot to my car?"
So he stopped, and eventually cut out smoking entirely by first focusing on those interstitial moments.
I had a similar experience when I was addicted to smart phones and social media a few years ago. I found myself grabbing my phone during times when my phone was unnecessary. As a new mom, this often meant my phone was in my hand the moment my son didn't need my immediate attention. What we both lost during that time can never be returned, but I try to give myself grace. I quit, at least.
I'd like to see the return of sacred boredom spaces. Lines, red lights, hospital waiting rooms, restaurants, the bathroom. Like realizing that the afterwork cigarette does not need to happen in the parking lot, I wish we all as a society could agree that some places are sacred, that some places are meant for boredom.
I had a quote on my notebook in junior high. I don't know who said it, probably an offhand remark from a pop idol in a teen magazine, but the quote was "Boredom is an excellent motivator."
I repeat this to my son whenever he complains of boredom. He hates it, he hates it with an intensity that helps me know I am on the right track. He hates it so much I know he's internalized it and will repeat it during interstitial moments in his 30's.
Excellent article, I have a new book on my TBR and a new idea to think about for the rest of the day.
Superb discussion of the importance of "interstitial time". As someone who does not own a cell phone, I enjoy the waiting moments where I simply sit (or stand in line), think, look at people and things around me. It creates snippets of mind silence that help slow down a hurried pace.
Another aspect that could be added to the list of benefits presented here, is the formation of memories. If we spend time simply "being bored", we have time to replay conversations, events, etc. in our mind, a process that gets interrupted if we turn to our phones instead.
And when our kids don't have screens to turn toward in those moments, they learn to take pleasure in these quiet gaps.
As a Boomer, I grew up getting to know boredom in ways described in this piece (I have also read “The Extinction of Experience” which affirmed the interstitial paths on which I walked and daydreamed—and still do, but not without the intentional abandonment of digital distractions).
I grew up in a house that was a quarter mile from a river. Whenever I felt bored or addled or in some state of unresolved conflict (with parents or peers), I would walk to an abandoned ferry landing to sit and watch the quiet flow of that broad and beautiful body of water. Within ten to twenty minutes I was calm and at peace with my imperfect life (not realizing that this routine would be called mindfulness years later). Spending time at the river, living on my grandmother’s Kentucky farm during the summer (with no TV or electronic gadgets), and being exposed to the wild world of fields and animals rooted me inside fallow time that wasn’t measured in minutes or hours.
I appreciate Rosen’s work on why and how to reclaim and re-embody our lives—and to help our children and grandchildren to know boredom as a simple gift that keeps on giving.
Try ultrarunning!
or solo any workout….mine is cycling…..after 1-2 hrs I feel rejuvenated…..
This fantastic article put into words my main motivation for switching to a flip phone. During my decade+ of smartphone ownership, I had a nagging sense that my habit of picking up my phone in every spare moment of downtime was destroying something in me, but I couldn't stop doing it. Now that I have a flip phone, the option of scrolling to flee boredom has been taken away (at least while I'm out of the house/away from my laptop!) and it's been a game changer for my creativity, patience, and also my overall mood.
Good for you, Christina. I also made that switch back about 6 years ago. It's a pain occasionally, but I'm happy with my flip phone.
I think life is like lifeguarding: long periods of boredom followed by a few minutes of excitement. Sure, the phone can bring a simulacrum of nearly nonstop excitement, but since you're not paying attention to reality anymore, you'll miss the far better excitement of the real world.
(Not to mention that the human brain is not equipped to handle the non-stop cortisol or dopamine that the phone provides.)
Also, Dr Seuss as usual has the best retort to a child's complaint of boredom (from Oh the Thinks You Can Think):
"You can think up some birds. That's what you can do. You can think about yellow or think about blue."
We now quote this at our kids whenever they say they don't know what to do (they find it highly irritating...but then they do go figure out what to do!)
This year for Lent I chose to abstain from cell phone use except for texting and calls...basically use my smart phone like a flip phone. Those six weeks of abstinence allowed me to break the habit of mindlessly picking it up to endlessly scroll. I have my interstitial moments back that used to be sucked up by phone-gazing. It is such a welcome relief to not feel constantly co-opted by my phone. A game-changer for real.
Interestingly, I read this in an interstitial moment but it did make me reflect
Rosen’s reflections on the psychological costs of constant connectivity are insightful, but her analysis suffers from an elite lens that assumes everyone has the time, freedom, and autonomy to embrace boredom. The examples she offers—waiting at stoplights, resisting the urge to check a phone in a doctor’s office, letting children “go outside and play”—all presuppose a level of stability and security that many Americans, particularly working-class families, don’t enjoy. For a single parent juggling jobs or a gig worker navigating multiple platforms to survive, a smartphone isn’t just a toy or crutch—it’s a lifeline.
The romanticism of a “pre-digital” world also reflects a narrow slice of experience—those who had safe neighborhoods, structured school days, and the luxury of analog leisure. That past never belonged to the working poor, and it still doesn’t. Calls to "reclaim idleness" are hollow if you can’t afford unstructured time.
Most tellingly, Rosen fails to hold elite tech architects accountable. The digital attention economy wasn’t built from the bottom up—it was designed and monetized by Silicon Valley insiders, marketed aggressively to parents, and normalized in elite institutions. Yet the burden of reform, in Rosen’s telling, falls disproportionately on individual families—especially parents—rather than the cultural gatekeepers who fueled this transformation.
If we’re serious about reclaiming the human goods of patience, creativity, and reflection, then reform must start with those who set the pace: tech executives, elite educators, and media tastemakers. They’ve long sold distraction as innovation—now they should be the first to unplug.
In the car with my daughter yesterday, we were talking about whether there's a correlation between various traits in animals and their lifespan. We spent 4-5 minutes speculating about this, and neither of us once pulled out our smartphones and said, "Hey Google..." (I don't own a smartphone and none of us are accustomed to doing that.)
Instant information and lack of boredom doesn't just make it impossible to daydream. It makes thinking itself harder, since thinking requires time to answer questions you're internally asking yourself. If your response to any question is to immediately ask Google, you've effectively stopped thinking.
We may have more information at our fingertips than ever before, but increasingly we have less knowledge in our brains. And when it comes to thinking (and dreaming and creativity), knowledge is what matters. Good thing we have AI to be creative for us now. :-)
Excellent essay. Puts me in mind of this John Gray quote featured here in this piece: https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/take-me-to-your-experts
“Instead of the daily encounters that enable communities to sustain a common life, random collections of solitary people are protected from each other.... Rather than connecting in troublesome relationships, they are turning to cyber-companions for frictionless friendship and virtual sex. The contingencies of living in a material world are being swapped for an algorithmic dreamtime. The end-point is self-enclosure in the Matrix – a loss of the definitively human experience of living as a fleshly, mortal creature..... the defiant smile in the face of cruel absurdity, the glance that began a love that changed us forever, a tune it seemed would always be with us, tears in the rain.”
Daydreaming and boredom are both important. Being off the phone is what encourages both to happen. I miss the days of chatting with strangers while waiting in line and doing other "boring" activities. No wonder so many people are lonely and don't know how to socialize. Quite sad.
Many years ago, I was fortunate to audit an intermediate German class taught by Professor Anna Grotans at Ohio State U. We read Michael Ende's haunting, sci-fi fable, "Momo." Truly, it taught me to resist mass-fantasizing about what time is *supposed* to be used for. I highly recommend it: https://www.amazon.com/Momo-Puffin-Books-Michael-Ende/dp/0140317538/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3H187UEYQO9GZ&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.W6HO_EYV9naGp4TeEDJod6rGVzSG0JnovwV4blP_w2vtKUjd2DKdhNeJ-3bW2EY2bIpeSy9OrzvrH7PxO5XU3Y-uJqHTWxbqZVNHClsojdTOPCN8URboV9QMAocvhsTKAfbXc7mFhlPCBh9KzsubC2zDzzON_69J_XwLbvepv6cQ03dYP9ysCzrgiL3ZAqTZjeZLeYicASVgaXj9nxOOb50bjJixJr7C2k4rG8OSDoI.fBEuxoH1AMAwdw-n0QwmZqc1lVBtz9UL-OTTdIslGOo&dib_tag=se&keywords=michael+ende+momo&qid=1746451640&sprefix=michael+ende+momo%2Caps%2C126&sr=8-1
As a member of the pre-smartphone generation (69 years old), I have a couple books to recommend that really sent this message home - even before all this solid, newer research. They certainly drove our parental decision to keep only one computer in a central location (same with TV) and to postpone mobile phones until each kid turned 16. (Both kids, now in their early 30's, express gratitude for doing so, often comparing their rather minimal use with that of their over-connected peers.)
1) The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future (AKA: Don't Trust Anyone Under 30), 2009, by Mark Bauerlein. He has published an update by the same name, 2022.
2) Hamlet's Blackberry: A Practical Philosophy for Building a Good Life in the Digital Age , by William Powers. A beautiful philosophical exploration of the expected and unexpected consequences of technology through the ages.
Every time I see a kid with a phone at a dinner table or a tablet while sitting in a car, I can't help but think how they are being robbed. How will they ever cultivate an imagination or creativity if they are constantly fed? We have a 4-year-old, and raising them without these things is not hard. Our parents did it, and so forth. Parenting is not supposed to be outsourced to devices.
This speaks directly to something I’ve felt but struggled to name, the erosion of those sacred in-between spaces where creativity and self-connection are born. As a photographer and writer, I’ve come to realise that my best ideas don’t arrive when I’m trying, but in the quiet gaps: stirring a pot, walking without music, staring out the window while my files export. The death of daydreaming feels like a spiritual loss, not just a cognitive one. Thank you for naming this with such clarity and care and for reminding us that the reclamation of boredom might just be one of the most radical acts of our time.