Why Scrolling Isn't a Cure-All for Boredom

Mindless scrolling and fast-forwarding through digital content to avoid boredom can backfire. Here are 4 tips to manage boredom without going right to your phone.

Mindless scrolling can increase boredom and frustration. Photo: Abdullah Klinic/Getty Images

Recent research: Mindless scrolling and fast-forwarding to avoid boredom can backfire

• Boredom signals the need for meaningful engagement, not just a lack of activity.

• Digital switching can increase boredom, not cure it.

• Immersing in longer content can reduce boredom more than frequent switching.

• Mindful media use can turn boredom into an opportunity for growth.

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If you are one of the parents trying to come to grips with kids who think they are “bored” and the use of digital devices, I hope you were smarter than me and used boredom as a signal rather than a personality defect. I was raised to think that being bored was a bad thing. It was also a dangerous thing to confess around my mother unless you wanted to pull weeds or dust furniture. In my house, boredom was a minor level sin and something you hid at all costs.

Today, there is endless content available 24/7. If I’d had a mobile device with 24/7 connectivity, hiding my boredom would have been a lot easier. Both of these solutions (keeping your head down or mindlessly engaging in digital content) turn out to be unsatisfactory.

The article discussed below by Tam and Inzlicht (2024) suggests that mindless content switching isn’t a reliable cure for boredom and that it could, in fact, make you feel worse. The positive benefits of boredom—the motivation to engage in something different—are offset by the lack of effort, discernment, and, ultimately, meaning. I’d argue that the result is a mismatch between expectations of “unlimited access” and the reality of what’s out there—a kind of content FOMO.

As I can attest, hiding boredom also doesn’t work. A study by Belinda, Melwani, and Kapadia (2024) explains why suppressing boredom doesn’t work. It takes energy and, therefore, depletes cognitive resources. If being bored makes you tired, suppressing it will make you even more tired. A better solution rests in self-awareness —paying attention to feelings and acting with intention rather than brushing all that unfunneled lethargy aside.

What messages did you internalize about boredom?

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Boredom is a universal emotion that is often misunderstood and even stigmatized. Like other unpleasant emotions, such as anger and sadness, boredom is a part of life. Experiencing and managing negative emotions is essential to our mental health and well-being. Feeling bored is characterized by a lack of stimulation, interest, or challenge. While some equate boredom with laziness or a lack of ambition, it can have positive effects because, like other negative emotions, it signals that something needs to change.

Boredom often motivates us to change what we're doing. When it leads us to more creative, engaging, and meaningful activities, it's healthy and adaptive. Seeking stimulation is the natural response to boredom, and our digitally connected world offers 24/7, always-on media content. Scrolling on your phone, tablet, or computer can quickly become the knee-jerk response to feelings of boredom, but this may not always be in our best interest.

The Digital Media Trap

According to recent research by Tam and Inzlicht (2024), digital media as a quick fix is not the cure-all for boredom many believe it to be. Their findings suggest that in some cases, scrolling through media can make you feel more, not less, bored.

Their paper, titled Fast-forward to boredom: How switching behaviour on digital media makes people more bored, reports on seven studies exploring the relationship between boredom and digital media use. The study generated a lot of news stories whose headlines declared that scrolling makes us bored. However, as is often the case when translating research findings for public consumption, headlines are designed to grab attention rather than tell the whole story. Without reading the journal article, it's easy to assume that their findings are leveling another critique at digital media rather than as an opportunity to understand boredom's function as a motivational signal.

Boredom: A Universal but Misunderstood Emotion

Boredom is not simply a matter of having "nothing to do." It's a situational appraisal that occurs when an activity is either too easy, too challenging or lacks personal meaning. This emotion acts as an internal alarm, signaling it's time to engage in something more stimulating or meaningful. Boredom also carries a social stigma. We often treat it as a sign of laziness or lack of ambition because "only boring people get bored." But while boredom can be uncomfortable, it's not necessarily bad. It can be a healthy and adaptive motivator, pushing us to seek new challenges and activities that ultimately enhance our creativity, resourcefulness, and well-being.

Digital Switching: A Double-Edged Sword

Tam and Inzlicht conducted seven studies that explored how switching, such as fast-forwarding videos or finding new digital material, is related to boredom. In all experimental conditions, media use was artificially constrained to allow researchers to explore the bidirectional relationship between boredom and switching.

The researchers concluded several things:

1. The participants believed switching among digital content sources would help boredom. This belief makes practical sense: changing content increases stimulation and should, theoretically, improve the likelihood of finding something interesting. Equally important from a cognitive perspective is the expectation that switching creates—finding further and hopefully more entertaining content if you find yourself bored.

2. The study suggests that while digital switching might temporarily fend off boredom, it could also exacerbate it, depending on the context. The findings indicate that less frequent switching and greater immersion in a single content can lead to more positive media experiences. For example, longer-form content, such as narratives, allows for deeper engagement, whereas short-form videos often lack a compelling story arc, leading to increased scrolling, switching, and, ultimately, boredom.

3. Under some contexts, boredom was equally predictive of switching as switching was of boredom. However, it's important to note that media behaviors measured in controlled experimental settings may not replicate real-life media consumption experiences with unlimited content and social influences. This trade-off is a continual challenge in media psychology research.

4. Participants who were given content without the ability to switch or fast-forward tended to be less bored than those who could switch. The authors attributed this to participants being more immersed in the videos. But it's also plausible that participants who knew they didn't have the option to switch had decreased expectations and no sense of lost opportunity costs due to the lack of agency. Consequently, they experienced less boredom. The participants' experience of boredom rested on their ability to find something interesting in the videos given—whether it was one or several.

Real-World Implications

Not surprisingly, those assigned to the "boring" videos group were more bored and switched if they could. It's also reasonable that even those participants assigned the "interesting videos" in the "able-to-switch" group might experience more boredom than the static watchers since the switching condition creates expectations that were unmet by the choices offered. Comparing the psychological experience of 'knowing you could search for new content' versus 'knowing you have no choice' could significantly impact the sense of agency and control, which could, in turn, influence satisfaction and/or boredom.

The study's conclusions, while analytically sound, seem overstated in terms of their real-world impact. When participants were allowed to choose their own YouTube videos, the relationship between switching and boredom was statistically significant, but the effect size was small. Nevertheless, finding a positive relationship between boredom and content-switching further highlights the importance of mindful media use.

Practical Advice for Bored Scrollers

It's important to remember that boredom is a normal response to a lack of stimulation, not a personal failing, especially if we consider boredom an opportunity to reflect and engage in more meaningful activities. Digital media can be a convenient way to alter our environment, but not if we're on autopilot. The benefits of digital media rest on how we use it, and intention and mindfulness are at the core of these behaviors.  

Here are four tips:

1. Embrace Boredom: Instead of feeling ashamed of being bored, use it as a signal to seek out activities that offer greater interest, meaning, and challenge.  Help kids describe their feelings (e.g. Daniel Siegel's "name it to tame it" exercise) to help them manage negative emotions more productively.

2. Be Mindful of Media Use: Pay attention to how your mood changes during media consumption. Monitor your moods during media use to identify when a positive experience turns negative—a restorative few minutes watching funny cat videos can turn into a downward spiral of self-doubt when the scrolling goes on too long.

3. Seek Meaningful Engagement: Research shows that engaging in activities where skill and challenge are balanced results in higher levels of well-being and life satisfaction than just being "busy" and "relaxing" (Csikszentmihalyi, 1998).

4. Engage with Longer-Form Content: Based on their findings, Tam and Inzlicht (2024) suggest that becoming more immersed in one piece of content will result in more positive media experiences (e.g., less boredom). There are many theoretical reasons to support this suggestion. Longer-form content allows people to tell more compelling and meaningful stories that enable viewers to become immersed in a story, identify with a character or situation, and become emotionally invested in the outcome. Short-form videos often lack a compelling story arc, reducing the emotional value and increasing the likelihood of scrolling, switching, and fast-forwarding. However, saliency, not length, is the strongest predictor of video engagement and satisfaction (Yu & Gao, 2022).

While digital media can offer a quick fix for a lot of things, including boredom, it has the potential to make you feel worse, not better. By understanding boredom as a motivational tool rather than a negative emotion to be avoided at all costs, we can make more intentional choices that enhance our well-being and satisfaction rather than just filling the time.

References

Belinda, C., Melwani, S., & Kapadia, C. (2024). Breaking boredom: Interrupting the residual effect of state boredom on future productivity. Journal of Applied Psychology, 109(6), 829–849. https://doi.org/10.1037/apl0001161, 109(6), 829-849. https://doi.org/10.1037/apl0001161 

Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1998). Finding flow: The psychology of engagement with everyday life. Basic Books.

Tam, K. Y. Y., & Inzlicht, M. (2024). Fast-forward to boredom: How switching behavior on digital media makes people more bored. J Exp Psychol Gen. https://doi.org/10.1037/xge0001639

Tam, K. Y. Y., van Tilburg, W. A. P., Chan, C. S., Igou, E. R., & Lau, H. (2021). Attention drifting in and out: The boredom feedback model. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 25(3), 251-272. https://doi.org/10.1177/10888683211010297

Yu, Z., & Gao, M. (2022). Effects of video length on a flipped English classroom. Sage Open, 12(1), 21582440211068474. https://doi.org/10.1177/21582440211068474