How Do We Know We're Doing It Right?: Essays on Modern Life

by Pandora Sykes

And yet boredom is being erased from our lives. We are no longer bored, we are ‘homo distractus’,25 writes Wu. Our aversion to boredom has become almost admirable. In 2014, the social psychologist Timothy Wilson asked participants to sit in a lab room and do nothing but think, for fifteen minutes. The room was empty except for a device that emitted a mild but painful electric shock. Despite all participants stating beforehand that they would pay to avoid an electric shock, 67% of male participants and 25% of women gave themselves electric shocks – in some cases,26 multiple times – simply because they were bored. Spending even fifteen minutes alone with their thoughts proved too much for many of them.