Boredom is something that we’re all familiar with, regardless of age, gender, or ethnicity. For instance, as the PM declared the first COVID-19 lockdown in March 2020, most of us stopped going to work and school, meaning we now had all the time in the world and nothing to keep us occupied. As a result, the percentage of adults in Great Britain who reported feeling depressed skyrocketed. This shocking news became a common topic of discussion, and made many re-evaluate the impact that boredom has on our mental health.
1. What is boredom?
At first glance, boredom may seem like a simple and easy-to-understand concept - when you have nothing to do, or when an activity is not engaging enough. While that definition isn’t incorrect, it doesn’t tell us a lot about its nature. Instead, we’ll define it as the feeling of wanting stimulation while not having access to it, and it can be both a personality trait (boredom proneness) and a temporary state.
One thing we can all agree on is that boredom makes us feel uncomfortable. A 2014 study claimed that people are likely to pick a painful stimulation over no stimulation at all. In this experiment, subjects were kept in an empty room for 15 minutes, next to a button that if pressed, would inflict a mild electric shock. The aim of this study was to investigate whether imagination and thoughts alone were enough to keep us entertained in the face of boredom. Surprisingly, 18 out of the 42 participants (mostly men) ended up pressing the button, fully aware of its consequences. Although this experiment failed to account for differences in pain tolerance, it does correlate with what we see outside the lab – for example, the fact that some people pick at painful scabs when they’re bored. That brings us to our next question: why do we hate being bored?
2. Why do we get bored?
To answer this question, we must understand why we get bored in the first place. Scientists believe that our ancestors greatly benefitted from the feeling of boredom as it pushed them to try new things in pursuit of novel stimulation, such as seeking the company of others and forming meaningful bonds. Staying in groups meant a higher chance of survival, so it makes sense why our brains, even to this day, are so afraid of being alone. Natural selection favoured those who actively sought human connections as they were more likely to find a mate and survive to pass on their advantageous genes. Activities such as socialising also prompt the creation of connections in the brain; conversely, avoiding these activities could result in neurodegeneration and brain atrophy. Because we don’t like feeling uncomfortable, we are compelled to look for new stimuli and therefore, we’re able to increase our chances of survival and prevent damage to our brains in the long run. We are also rewarded with dopamine, which explains why completing these activities feels so fulfilling and gratifying. So, to put it simply, boredom has to feel uncomfortable, or else we would simply swipe it under the rug and go about our same old routine without a second thought.
3. Lack of stimulation and depression
So far, we’ve discussed the benefits of boredom and how it motivates us to seek stimulation. However, that’s only one side of the argument. What about people who suffer from boredom proneness? And what if you simply ignore it? That brings us back to the COVID-19 example. Although necessary, our daily lives were severely disrupted, and we experienced never-seen-before levels of boredom. That, subsequently, caused our mental health to decline. According to the Office for National Statistics, 1 in 5 adults in Great Britain reported feeling depressed during quarantine, whereas before the pandemic it was around 1 in 10. Of course, that wasn’t single-handedly caused by boredom; financial stress, the loss of loved ones and several other factors also played a key role. Having said that, it would be fallacious to sit here and discredit its contribution to the numbers. Since that dull and monotonous lifestyle was forced upon us, we had no chance to act on or tend to our brain’s needs, and so, the uneasy feeling never went away and our dopamine levels remained low.
Moreover, boredom as a personality trait is closely linked to drug abuse, gambling addiction and depression. Research shows that individuals who are prone to feeling bored have fewer dopamine receptors in the brain, meaning that they need more stimulation to feel satisfied and consequently partake in riskier activities. This has been shown to affect men more than women as was suggested by the electric shock experiment, though, scientists are not entirely sure of the underlying reasons.
4. Final thoughts
Boredom is our brain’s response to lack of stimulation. Its main functions are to instigate the search for novel stimuli and to push us away from activities we don’t enjoy. We can, therefore, conclude that boredom in moderation is a sign of a healthy brain, one that recognises it as a threat and tries to eliminate it. Even though we sometimes have no control over our surroundings, such as how you can’t stop going to school just because you find it boring; take it as a friendly reminder to make the most out of your spare time to ensure that your brain is getting the stimulation it needs.
Photo by Niklas Hamann on Unsplash.
This article was written by Giulia Lima and edited by Julia Dabrowska. Interested in writing for WiN UK yourself? Contact us through the blog page and the editors will be in touch!
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