The Call of the Screen
“Are we there yet?!!!” I recall saying this as a child, later enduring it from my kids. With this call from the car’s back seat we announced that we were unhappily bored.
We had only our own creativity to entertain ourselves. We learned a lot from those experiences. We were accustomed to being responsible for ourselves when we were bored.
Today, it is more difficult for kids and adults to endure or enjoy time to just be. Walk down a city street and watch people looking at their screens. Sit in a restaurant and notice how many people are looking at their screens and not their companions. It’s not uncommon for teens to text each other even while sitting together. The screen is the new addictive drug, messing with our minds.
A colleague shared that the first thing he does when he wakes up is to sit up to read email on his iPad. Some of us keep our smart phones bedside. We don’t want to miss anything, heaven forbid! Yet, ironically, through social media, we’ve become more isolated.
“Many of us reflexively grab our phones at the first hint of boredom throughout the day,” reports NPR. They cite a recent study documenting, “mobile consumers now spend an average of 2 hours and 57 minutes each day on mobile devices.”
Our screen addiction comes with interpersonal and personal consequences. WNYC radio host Manoush Zomorodi wondered, “Are we packing our minds too full? What might we be losing out on by texting, tweeting and email-checking those moments away?” She began a project called, “Bored and Brilliant: The Lost Art Of Spacing Out.”
Concerned that we are losing vital thinking capacity, Zomorodi did some research. She found that that we “get our most original ideas when we stop the constant stimulation and let ourselves get bored.”
Psychologist Sandi Mann tracked people transitioning from boredom to creative activity. They “came up with their most novel ideas when they did the most boring task of all — which was reading the phone book.” Mann is now an activist to recover boredom in our lives.
When our minds can freely wander, daydream and connect with subconscious thoughts, creative connections emerge. Boredom paves the way for “autobiographical planning” or goal setting; essential to productive thinking. The “Bored and Brilliant” project was created to engage us in the cause. I signed up – admittedly with trepidation – to use their app to track my time spent on smart phone and tablet for one week. Starting on February 2, participants will be given a daily challenge for a week, and results will be tracked.
I’m reminded of the noise of the classical Jewish study house where learning and insight flows from conversation. Or the traditional synagogue, where cacophonous sound punctuates communal singing. Jews think and pray interactively, communally, and with personal meditation woven in between. Maybe it’s time to pray, learn, and just be. Maybe frightening, but absolutely liberating.
