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myPerspectives/Grade 6 • Unit 3
Bored . . . and Brilliant? A Challenge To Disconnect From Your Phone
[Audio Transcript]
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST: Here's a question for you. Do you have enough time to be
bored anymore, as in mental downtime? Now, if you have a smart phone, you already
know what I'm getting at. Many of us reflexively grab our phones at the first hint of
boredom—say, during our commute—like these people we found waiting for Metro
trains here in Washington, D.C.
JONATHAN MCBRIDE: You caught me red-handed.
SABRINA JACKSON: Well, I know I stay on my phone all day. I know I would do more
things, but I stay on my phone all day, from the time—like, I got off this morning. And
I've been on my phone since I got off.
CORNISH: That's Sabrina Jackson of Washington and Jonathan McBride of Lima, Peru.
A study done by the research group Flurry found that mobile consumers now spend an
average of 2 hours and 57 minutes each day on mobile devices. So are we packing our
minds too full? What's lost with all this texting, tweeting, email checking?
Well, our friend Manoush Zomorodi, host of WNYC's podcast New Tech City, is digging
into that question. And she joins us to talk about her reporting for a project called "Bored
and Brilliant: The Lost Art Of Spacing Out." Hey there, Manoush.
MANOUSH ZOMORODI: Hi, Audie.
CORNISH: So you call yourself a skeptical technophile, right?
ZOMORODI: (Laughter). Yes.
CORNISH: And, I mean, I have a smart phone. You have a smart phone. And I assume
that you're on yours all the time, right?
ZOMORODI: You know, it's gotten so bad that I actually downloaded an app. And it's
called Moment. And it can measure not only how much time you spend on your phone,
but how many times you check it. And I'm ashamed to say that I am averaging between
50 and a hundred check-ins a day. And, you know, it's not just because...
CORNISH: Whoa. (Laughter).
ZOMORODI: Yeah, it's a lot.
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CORNISH: I'd make fun of you, but mine would probably be the same (laughter).
ZOMORODI: Well, yeah, tell me about your relationship with your phone, Audie.
CORNISH: It's a love-hate relationship. I just try not to sleep with it under the pillow at
this point.
ZOMORODI: Yeah. So for me, I kind of realized that I have not been bored since I got a
smart phone seven years ago. And recently—another admission here—it's gotten
particularly bad because I've become one of those people who cannot stop playing a
game. And my addiction is a game called TwoDots. If you ride the subway in New York
City, everyone is playing it.
CORNISH: Well, the thing is, a lot of times when we're checking our phones—right?—
it's time when we would've spaced out anyway, in the elevator, in a checkout line...
ZOMORODI: Yeah.
CORNISH: Are we really losing anything here? I mean, what have you learned about the
importance of time to be bored?
ZOMORODI: Well, what I've learned is that our brains are doing some really important
work when we think we're doing nothing. So research suggests we get our most original
ideas when we stop the constant stimulation and we let ourselves get bored. So one of the
researchers I spoke to for the project is a psychologist named Dr. Sandi Mann at the
University of Central Lancashire in the U.K. And she actually tested for the connection
between boredom and creativity. She did an experiment where she made people do
something really boring and then try a creative task. This was a little test she came up
with. And the participants came up with their most novel ideas when they did the most
boring task of all, which was reading the phone book. And, in fact, she is on a mission to
bring back boredom. Here's why.
SANDI MANN: When we're bored we're searching for something to stimulate us, so we
might go off in our heads to try and find that stimulation by our minds wandering,
daydreaming. You start thinking a little bit beyond the conscious, a little bit into the
subconscious, which allows sort of different connections to take place.
CORNISH: So there is value in being bored. But do we really know if the use of smart
phones is affecting that?
ZOMORODI: Well, that's the big question, right? In the last decade or so, neuroscientists
have—they've really started to understand what they called mind wandering and how it
leads to daydreaming, which is actually the brain's default mode. And that phrase—
default mode—was first used by Dr. Marcus Raichle in 2001 to describe the brain's
resting function. We go to that place naturally. So psychologists and neuroscientists have
only just started to study what the consequences could be of disrupting that rest function.
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One thing they do worry is that smart phones could be keeping us from doing something
called autobiographical planning, and that is goal setting.
CORNISH: All right. Well, remember those smart phone users we talked about earlier?
We actually put this idea to them about, you know, whether it might be better just to put
the thing down. Here's what they said.
JOE MEYIAN: Better to be bored? I don't know if I agree with that. I think it's a
combination of both is good. I think some free time is good, but I also think the brain
needs to be engaged and active.
ADRIENNE FIELDING: I would agree that boredom is a good thing. I think lack of
nothing to do in your hands or in front of you gives your brain some space to think.
CORNISH: Washington, D.C., subway riders using their smart phones on the platform.
That was Joe Meyian of Arlington, Virginia; Adrienne Fielding of Silver Spring,
Maryland. And Manoush, on New Tech City this week you were challenging people to
think about this, to rediscover the lost art of spacing out. How?
ZOMORODI: So, Audie, we've come up with some ways that people can find the right
balance for them with their tech usage. First, what we're going to do is get a baseline. We
are partnering with that app that I mentioned that's called Moment that measures how
many times a day we pick up our phones and how many minutes we use on our phones.
We're just seeing where do things stand now and where could some changes take place?
CORNISH: Explain how this is going to work.
ZOMORODI: OK. So "Bored and Brilliant"—it's this one-week challenge. It's going to
happen the first week of February. But you can sign up right now, start observing your
own phone behavior and get ready to rethink it.
CORNISH: Manoush, thanks so much for talking with us, and I guess we'll see you in a
few weeks.
ZOMORODI: I'm looking forward it, Audie.
CORNISH: That's Manoush Zomorodi, host of the podcast New Tech City from our
member station WNYC, talking about her show this week. You can find details at the All
Tech Considered blog on npr.org. In fact, some of us here at ATC are going to try to cut
our own phone usage, and we'll have Manoush back next month to see how it went.
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Notes