Smartphones have stolen something from us all. We gained instantaneous Internet access. But we have lost the time and the capacity to become BORED. And that’s a bad thing.

The Internet was once on the way to becoming the repository containing the entire corpus of humanity’s knowledge. Any person in the world, however rich or poor, free or oppressed, could access it.

But then, the business model built on the advertisement has turned a community resource into an attention trap. Nowadays, the most recent, the most shallow, and the most attention-hijacking news and posts prosper. They “save” us from boredom, but destroy our ability to control our life.

Yet, smartphones provide us with exactly this option. They supply us with a “painkiller" on demand. A painkiller that is available to kill the pain from boredom 24/7 for no extra price. A painkiller that, just like real painkillers, causes addiction. A painkiller that, just like real painkillers, causes medication-overuse headaches if we try to stop using them.

Whenever I need a distraction from boredom, I can distract myself. I can divert my attention away from boredom to the most infuriating news about a bureaucrat from India denying medical help to a 3-year-old kid from Australia. I have never been to either country and yet I get to know the suffering of these people, helpfully provided to me by both “traditional” news outlets and modern channels.

How did people avoid boredom in the pre-digital era, and what was the value of being bored? Let’s take a look at the people who could do whatever they wanted to. To be specific, let’s try the shoes of the rich aristocrats from the 18th century. If you were one of them - you wouldn’t have been able to get away from boredom!

If you wanted anything to happen, you had to go outside and talk with real people. Through this connection-seeking boredom, you would build stronger social connections and more powerful communities. While also having the physical activity that we crave today so desperately!

If no people were around, you could turn inside. Face yourself and stay alone with your thoughts. Through this inward-facing boredom, you would discover something valuable about your ideas and yourself.

I had this experience first-hand (even though I am no 18th-century aristocrat). There is a bookshelf in my dancing school. Once I arrived there an hour early for my Lindy Hop class. I was waiting for my friends to come and the class to start. I had broken my phone the weekend before, and I still didn’t buy a new one. So, I was extremely bored.

I noticed the shelf in the lounge and started opening the books. And I got sucked into reading about the history and the culture of Lindy Hop. I felt a greater closeness to the culture of what I am doing, I felt more BELONGING. Just from reading something that I would have never discovered in the news channels or YouTube trends.

And yet, a week before that happened, I was there an hour too early as well. But that time, I had my phone. So I read important news about … about what? I don’t remember at all, what I read back then. These news had no impact on my life, though I felt they were soooo important to read. But while reading about dancing turned out to be both valuable and pleasant, reading the news did not.

Today we ALL live the life of a rich person from the 18th century. None of us in the West has to work 14 hours in the fields, just to feed ourselves anymore. And yet, the cases like the Lindy Hop book are an exception, not the rule. We say more often that we have too little time to stay in touch with our friends, too little energy to be active, and definitely, totally, no time to think about ourselves and what we do.