Why Being Bored Is Good for You.

We are over entertained and it's making us miserable.

Is anyone else really bored?

Movies, music, social media, work, sports, none of it is as exciting as it should be or used to be. There is more entertainment than ever, yet we are somehow less entertained.

Ironically, this boredom might be the result of not doing enough boring things. For generations, New Zealanders spent their lives engaged in mundane activities. As a result, we could enjoy anything that was mildly interesting. In 2024, we can’t handle a second without heavy stimulation. We are so terrified of boredom that most of us won’t visit the bathroom without a phone in our hands.

American psychiatrist and author of Dopamine Nation Dr Anna Lembke asks an interesting question. “Why are the richest countries in the world the ones that have the most anxiety, depression and physical pain? Lots of food, lots of fun stuff, lots of medicines to protect us from illness and pain, but we’ve clearly reached some kind of tipping point, we’re now essentially more miserable than ever.”

She believes the co-location of our pleasure and pain processing centres plays a significant role in this modern dissatisfaction. There is a region of our brains called the ventral pallidum that acts like a scale, with pleasure on one side and pain on the other. The human body tends to seek homeostasis. When we become too hot, we sweat to cool down, and when we become too cold, we shiver to warm up. The same demand for balance is true in our reward centres. When we experience pleasure, the brain generates pain to maintain equilibrium. This creates problems for those of us living in lucky nations like New Zealand. Our lives are so filled with pleasurable substances, experiences, and behaviours that our reward pathways have become overwhelmed. We need more and more pleasurable things just to feel normal.