Boredom and Its Developmental Importance

[Dr. Sherry Turkle] “The boring bits.” Now, that’s how we’ve come to talk about the hesitation and pauses, the natural rhythms of face-to-face human conversation. And in part, we denigrate the spontaneous pathway of human conversation because social media offers us an alternative, a rush of constant stimulation. Those reels, those curated responses, we come to think this is how life is supposed to be. But it turns out that a capacity for boredom and even boredom in company, boredom at a dinner table, is one of the most important developmental achievements of childhood. Neuroscience teaches that when we experience boredom, the brain is replenishing itself. We’re laying down the pathways for a stable sense of self. When bored, we learn to go within ourselves and develop our imagination.