Horizontal. Phone propped less than 10cm away from your face: minimum hand muscles engaged. Twitter: meme (it’s funny, but you don’t laugh). Instagram: cat picture (it’s cute, but you don’t smile). Facebook: acquaintance complaining (it’s sad, but you don’t frown). Tumblr. Snapchat. Back to Twitter. Repeat for an hour or two, until bodily functions force you to get up – and even then, wait until you are in actual physical pain before going to the loo, so deep are you in your trance-like state.
No, this isn’t an extract from the diary of a depressive. This is how we members of Generation Z, the name given to those dull young things born between (roughly) 1998 and 2010, spend much of our free time, locked in “phone boredom”. The Daily Beast reports that this involves being on your phone, but largely just opening and closing up to 20-30 apps and finding nothing that interests you. Doing something, while doing nothing at all: technology has created a new way for Generation Z, to go out of their minds with boredom.
I can’t even argue with my dad’s favourite adage: “Only boring people get bored”, as I send countless snapchats to my friends of my blank expression, captioned “bored”, and receive the same in return; surely we are boring if, with the whole of the internet at our fingertips, this is what we are choosing to do?
However, there is no need to bemoan the state of today’s youth. This is a case of new technology, same old humans. There is a reason why bouncing a ball against a wall in boredom is a movie cliche: something about the repetitive movement and satisfying action fills the mind just enough to relax, but not enough to be entertained, making it an activity that epitomises ennui.
This translates directly into flicking through apps: we have a new way to be bored, but the feeling is identical. And just like pre-smartphone teenage boredom forced creativity and innovation – inventing a new game, exploring somewhere new – the phone-bored can also scroll their way into productivity, stumbling upon an incredible new Instagram artist, for example, or seeing a tweet that inspires a blogpost.
My dad is right, then, but everyone is boring at some point or another. If you are exasperated with phone boredom, don’t worry: one day it will be replaced by something new, and equally unexciting.
