Children should be allowed to get bored (2013) (opens in new tab)

Yet over these experiences you socialized, bonded, explored, got scared, risked and got away with it, promised not to tell parents, had general fun and discovered things you would have not otherwise. Any of these beats becoming a rotbrain in front of YouTube kids for hours.

I used to chase kites barefoot as a kid in India. I swear there was a time when I detected, while running with my eyes towards the sky, that I am stepping over a large piece of broken glass, like a fragment of a bottle of Coke, and I instinctively twisted my ankle so that instead of putting pressure on it, my foot and the bottle would just roll sideways. I just regained my posture, stepped hard to the side, unscathed, and continued running after the kite. There was not even a scratch on my foot. I still think about that incident. Maybe it was because I was so thin and lightweight that I managed to escape uninjured? What if it went horribly wrong and resulted in permanent nerve damage?

IMHO, a lot of these analyses suffer from survivorship bias; the ones who died don't get to tell you it was a bad idea.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias

You genuinely discovered an other aspect of personality development in childhood, risky play: https://www.afterbabel.com/p/why-children-need-risk-fear-and...

I would argue that what you were doing was actually good though because you were going maximum risk in an environment that was definitely dangerous but not to the level of adult life. When you got hurt it informed your learning brain and you likely adjusted your risk taking going forward. I see this skill missing a lot in the kids that grew up in the 2000's and later vs the early millenials/gen x. It's way better to learn your risk limits in an environment where the probability of permanent harm or death still exists but is actually a lot lower than doing adult things like driving a car. The way I usually describe this is a lot of the younger people I talk to weren't punched in the face enough by their peers growing up because that's the other social risk side of this equation.

Boys will be boys, we all did these things back then and the extreme vast majority of us survived, I'll take that over 10 hours of screens per day from age 3

My IT school changed since I was there. Talking to my old director he told me about the power of the environment. The premise is that we had a smaller school before, and it was not optimally planned, (student's cables running around, trash not exactly at disposal nearby, etc...)

It seems obvious there is a direct link between environment and behavior, but what he started doing was like "programming the environment" in order to trigger behavior changes.

Why would we litter if the trashcan is nearby ? Why would we go out of our way with cables if power-socket is on every table ?

The same way I wonder if we cannot "program" the environment for kids, in a way that allows us to let them get bored out, but in such a situation that is not dangerous but also productively interesting for the kids.

It is not the same to get bored out outside nearby a train track or in the industrial area, than in a somewhat controlled area ?

What do we want to expose them to ? We already know it might want to try crazy stuff ; but I guess we can reduce the danger factors and increase area for more interesting activities ? Also, this is all linked to age and I'm not sure we can make generic rules.

Growing up in a farm is much different than growing up in the streets, and ultimately, my parents and I think a lot of parents, decide to live where kids are safe to grow with somewhat nice activities and people around them.

(Note that I also met a couple that completely cut themselves from the world and they really had to come back to society when the kid came to age, just because a kid requires social interactions with people it's age)

Some of those things are terrible and dangerous to others. But parents need to be so much more measured in their responses.

Yes, you find out your kid was throwing stuff off bridges or being a vile bully, you come down like a pile of bricks.

But that doesn’t mean a full safety-rail environment. That means kids will jump off high places and break into others and we slap them on the wrist and carry on. That means lots of broken bones and the very occasional tragedy. Because a whole generation prone to mental illness and incapable of autonomy is infinitely worse. I think we’ve learned that by now.

It’s part of life. Helicoptering your kids is as bad as letting them run around after midnight with “the wrong types”. There’s a middle ground. We have swung too far into safety. It’s fine to push your kid to find a hobby or interest but a kid with half hour to half hour schedule every day is going to be miserable. They aren’t small adults. I’ve seen too many young adults with low self esteem, overthinking and afraid to socialize, waiting on texts or emails for hours or days for an answer instead of knowing their value and just calling after giving a reasonable response time; or simple saying “well f that, I’ll call somebody else”

This is literally my childhood / teenage years, and I was born in the 90s. Seems like everything changed when our dopamine systems were highjacked by handheld screens. Started to see the first glimpses of this, everyone crowding around my IPod in shop class to watch a crazy Aphex Twin music video I put on it, or even watching a movie on the Ipod, hooked up to my car speakers with my gf sitting in the school parking lot

Yep, and this attitude led to what's called today "helicopter parenting" I believe.

It's easy to recall the dangers.

But harder to list the benefits learnt, because they are often subconcious.

Bingo!

Even into my 30s I used to wake up in a panic remembering all the situations where I’ve almost died because I was just a little bored.

It sounds like the nostalgia in the comments here are akin to “I was poor, so you’re going to know what it’s like being poor too”.

Reminds me of finding a portapotty and using it to tumble down a hill, or visiting the local quarry when I was 8 and playing around near huge deep pools of strangely coloured liquids. Mid 80s were like the wild wild west.

> Putting things on the rails waiting for the train to see what happened. Everything from rocks [...]

What happened / happens? I've always wondered.

I guess the rock gets crushed?

What about trams, where the rails are instead submerged in a "crack" in the ground?

We did dumpster diving too and playing with fire :-)

A lot better than the 24/7 surveillance some kids are subjected to. Of course some parenting is needed to keep things in check to some degree.

Easier said than done if it is your kids taking risks, but kids and parents need room to learn and grow.

And acually boredom can allow children to become more self-reliant!

Most of the things you describe are part of a good childhood and learning boundaries and limits, and testing yourself, and growing harder, and having fun.

Sorry, but we had been living like that for ages before helicopter parents became the norm. Kids didn't die in the streets by the truckload, or jump off of roofs to their doom any any number to statistically matter, as this alarmist comment implies.

Ehem - sounds like a normal childhood?

Compare that to the sheltered, all-wishes-granted and no minute spent w/o distractions like social media, kids. Started with Gen Z who get all angsty, with panic attacks, when they have to start performing, i.e., during final exams and the like. And never learned to deal with emotions and free-floating thoughts, handling themself, keeping calm.

(all observed from multiple coworkers being parents, some had to bring their offspring to psychiatric therapy - of course, driven, as taking public transport on their own would be too much!)

Due to our normal childhood, we could handle situations later in life where today's offspring inevitably fails.

Dopamine isn’t something you indulge in. It certainly isn’t the pleasure itself.

The more appropriate common vernacular is “instant gratification” IMO. (And interestingly dopamine is associated with expectations of things like pleasure. But if you pull out your phone immediately when nothing is happening then there is a very small window for expectation to happen.)

Not so many understand that our brains need downtime to process experiences and emotions, and the lack of it can contribute to burnout

While I was younger and before the social networks I often looked puzzled when someone told me he/she is bored. How could that be? Usually there are much more to do or to think about than the time we got. I had to utilize all I got including sitting on the toilet or falling (trying) asleep at night. I may be mistaken but the maniac way of feeling ourselves good when we go out together may be a related matter. The having a schedule 20:00-24:00 or later Saturday night when you WILL feel good because it is the time for feeling good! Not only good but very good! Party pooping is not allowed! Quiet conversation or just being together quietly sounds more genuine most of the times. But all depends on the mood. Spinning around on the head may occur of course if the mood allows. But rarely on fixed schedule.

It is about the same now but I genuenly have much more to do, miss the times of doing nothing. Whenever I have to travel that is the time of reflection. Instead of pushing my nose into the mobile I stare outside or try to observe others without being creepy. It is easier nowadays, 90% of travellers use mobile. They don't know what happens around them. Luckily this mobile and tablet revolution passed me by, likely because of my occupation. I have all day at the computer I can use 30-60 min away, it is not enough actually.

Americans should definitely get (and take) more vacations.

All of social engineering and electric boddhism aims to get humanity into a room to be content with a slightly glowing stone..

This is absolutely true, though perhaps hard to understand just put simply like this. Sitting in silence is not the solution, but it will cause a solution to occur within you.

Sitting quiety will make you self-reflect. Self reflection will reduce stress and fear. Reduction of stress and less fear is a reduction in problems caused by human error, and negativity towards eachother (due to fear).

This immediately brings to mind the Seinfeld episode where Ellen's boyfriend stares blankly at the back of the airplane seat in front of him on a long international flight.

That being said, I generally agree with the sentiment.

Blaise Pascal

I'd go one step farther and say all of humanity's problems stem from humanity existing and needing resources to exist.

The older I get, the more I agree with this.

Also solutions.

good faith or bad faith, doesn't matter; as long as we have the faith that can get skeptics to rewrite their firmware without actual violence

--not DXP

If you open the window some flies will get in

--DXP

It's unfortunate that he spoke in terms of absolutes with this quote.

Yes, there are a number of problems that can be solved by sitting quietly, but there are many more problems that cannot.

- A fire

- An angry girlfriend

- Racism

- A border dispute

- Monopolies

- Corruption

- War

When waiting for lifts, instead of focusing on my phone in the vain hope of finding something useful and enlightening, I have a quick chat with those around me.

Unsurprisingly, the security guards and other neighbours now say hi to me regularly.

You could argue by providing those things you’re forcing them into perpetual stimulation. It’s a matter of perspective. The difference is that like sugar, unless we’re using our rationality to override the impulse, we’ll always pick stimulation though that’s not necessarily healthy.

Yeah, that's intuitively not a fate I would want to wish on my own kids. I'm just old enough to have spent the first ~14 years of my life without any personal computing devices, and I remember the boredom being agonizing.

Now, the kind of device I would provide is another story. Unfettered access to the Internet at large, including social media, is probably not well advised - access to Wikipedia probably is. Questions of degree.

gaming consoles were pro-social when you had split screens, a thing of the past

It's truly not a fair fight. There are literally trillions of dollars being spent to hijack our attention

I'm not saying its evil or anything, but on demand TV is IMO not a good thing for kids. It can be a real battle to get my daughter away from Bluey. Back in my day, we had to wait at least a day for the next episode, or often a week, or more! TV was actually "seasonal", which it no longer is.

I firmly believe that humans need seasons, i.e. periods of time that are different from each other, either summer, winter etc, or periods where a TV show is simply not accessible.

What almost always works to get away from TV, though, is if _I_ start a project, and within minutes my daughter will have picked up her own project, and we'll be companionably working on something.

In what sense is looking at a screen a failure to prepare for the world that adults navigate? Adults also look at screens.

700th bike trip to preschool or school is not teaching kids all that much.

I believe there is a point there, we live in a society where we must be entertained well! Not being entertained is shame. Allowing is fine enough word here I believe.

But the younger parents are of a generation who may not know that's normal and who have grown up glued to TVs, consoles and phones. They may need it spelled out

This is not about not allowing kids to be bored. This is about them wanting parents to create situations when kids are bored (by preventing their access to electronics specifically). As in, boredom nowdays requires additional work on the side of parents.

But that's exactly the point. The point is not because boredom is good per-se. The point is that our natural instinct to avoid boredom is what drives us to do stuff, to go places, to invent things, to dream.

The problem is not that eventually kids/people will find a way to not be bored. The problem is how easy and effortless it is to find entertainment these days.

The situation is similar to food. It's not that eating and enjoying food is bad, but the way modern society makes food available (and the quality of it) enables some quote suboptimal behaviours (to put it mildly)

Same exact thing with my 4 year old. We give him very little screen time but it is always the first thing he asks for. Once he (begrudgingly) accepts that he isn't going to get to watch TV and he has to play by himself (if we can't play with him for some reason like coming dinner or taking care of his infant brother) he goes into an amazing creative state where he will play by himself for hours, narrating and creating new games with rules. Or drawing on his easel.

Once he is in the creative zone, he takes charge of his time. He will ask us to help with something and then tell us to go away and then have us come see what he built while he tells us elaborate stories.

There is a kids book called the boring book that captures this process pretty well.

https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/the-boring-book_shinsuke-yoshi...

I noticed a similar pattern with mine.

I limit their time with electronic devices (yt kids, games, etc) because it seems that the devices/services are similar to drugs including withdrawal symptoms.

So getting bored just means having to find something to play with. Lego is a good creative way to spend time. Going outside is also preferable to Minecraft ..

Sounds very similar to mine, perhaps the process they need to go through to achieve the 'state of boredom' where true creativity can be unlocked.

> Then they ask if they can goto a friends house that they like.

The friends house where they will get TV or video games.

Dogs that beg for food are dogs that know they get fed when they beg for food.

OK, but the hard part is for care givers to overcome the period where the kid bothers the adults about his boredom.

Screens are a so simple solution. And it's so hard to block them.

https://www.3-6-9-12.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/flyer-ap...

Part of growing up is finding out that strangers really do have the best sweets.

If boredom is fun... is it boredom then?

/s

PS: the phone tried to autocorrect "boredom" to "Boston". Any truth to that? :)