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Waiting for a bus, standing in a queue, sitting through a long family dinner: for most of human history, these moments were simply part of life. Today, they hardly exist. The moment we feel even slightly bored, we reach for our phones. According to some surveys, many people check their phones dozens of times a day, often without noticing that they are doing it. We have, in a sense, found a cure for boredom. But some psychologists are now asking whether this cure is doing us more harm than good.

Boredom has a bad reputation. We tend to see it as a waste of time, or even as a sign that something is wrong with us. Yet researchers who study it argue that boredom has an important job to do. Like hunger, which tells us to eat, boredom is a signal. It tells us that what we are doing is not satisfying, and it pushes us to look for something more meaningful.

There is also evidence that boredom can make us more creative. In one well-known British study, researchers asked one group of people to do a very dull task, copying numbers from a phone book, before giving them a creative challenge: to think of as many uses as possible for two plastic cups. The people who had been bored first came up with more ideas than those who had not. When the mind has nothing interesting to do, it seems, it begins to wander, and a wandering mind makes unexpected connections.

Many writers and artists have described the same experience. They often say that their best ideas come to them while they are walking, washing the dishes or lying in bed, not while they are sitting at their desks. These are exactly the moments that we now fill with messages, videos and games.

None of this means that all boredom is good. Long periods of boredom, especially among teenagers, have been linked to risky behaviour and to feeling low. The point is not to be bored all the time, but to stop running away from every empty minute. A short period of boredom, experts say, is very different from a life without purpose.

So what can we do? Some families have introduced screen-free times, such as during meals or on long car journeys. Some teachers deliberately leave a few quiet minutes at the end of a lesson, with nothing to do but think. And some people simply leave their phones in another room for an hour a day. At first, they report, the silence feels uncomfortable. After a while, however, many of them discover something they had almost forgotten: what their own thoughts sound like.

Waiting for a bus, standing in a queue, sitting through a long family dinner: for most of human history, these moments were simply part of life. Today, they hardly exist. The moment we feel even slightly bored, we reach for our phones. According to some surveys, many people check their phones dozens of times a day, often without noticing that they are doing it. We have, in a sense, found a cure for boredom. But some psychologists are now asking whether this cure is doing us more harm than good.

Boredom has a bad reputation. We tend to see it as a waste of time, or even as a sign that something is wrong with us. Yet researchers who study it argue that boredom has an important job to do. Like hunger, which tells us to eat, boredom is a signal. It tells us that what we are doing is not satisfying, and it pushes us to look for something more meaningful.

There is also evidence that boredom can make us more creative. In one well-known British study, researchers asked one group of people to do a very dull task, copying numbers from a phone book, before giving them a creative challenge: to think of as many uses as possible for two plastic cups. The people who had been bored first came up with more ideas than those who had not. When the mind has nothing interesting to do, it seems, it begins to wander, and a wandering mind makes unexpected connections.

Many writers and artists have described the same experience. They often say that their best ideas come to them while they are walking, washing the dishes or lying in bed, not while they are sitting at their desks. These are exactly the moments that we now fill with messages, videos and games.

None of this means that all boredom is good. Long periods of boredom, especially among teenagers, have been linked to risky behaviour and to feeling low. The point is not to be bored all the time, but to stop running away from every empty minute. A short period of boredom, experts say, is very different from a life without purpose.

So what can we do? Some families have introduced screen-free times, such as during meals or on long car journeys. Some teachers deliberately leave a few quiet minutes at the end of a lesson, with nothing to do but think. And some people simply leave their phones in another room for an hour a day. At first, they report, the silence feels uncomfortable. After a while, however, many of them discover something they had almost forgotten: what their own thoughts sound like.

Waiting for a bus, standing in a queue, sitting through a long family dinner: for most of human history, these moments were simply part of life. Today, they hardly exist. The moment we feel even slightly bored, we reach for our phones. According to some surveys, many people check their phones dozens of times a day, often without noticing that they are doing it. We have, in a sense, found a cure for boredom. But some psychologists are now asking whether this cure is doing us more harm than good.

Boredom has a bad reputation. We tend to see it as a waste of time, or even as a sign that something is wrong with us. Yet researchers who study it argue that boredom has an important job to do. Like hunger, which tells us to eat, boredom is a signal. It tells us that what we are doing is not satisfying, and it pushes us to look for something more meaningful.

There is also evidence that boredom can make us more creative. In one well-known British study, researchers asked one group of people to do a very dull task, copying numbers from a phone book, before giving them a creative challenge: to think of as many uses as possible for two plastic cups. The people who had been bored first came up with more ideas than those who had not. When the mind has nothing interesting to do, it seems, it begins to wander, and a wandering mind makes unexpected connections.

Many writers and artists have described the same experience. They often say that their best ideas come to them while they are walking, washing the dishes or lying in bed, not while they are sitting at their desks. These are exactly the moments that we now fill with messages, videos and games.

None of this means that all boredom is good. Long periods of boredom, especially among teenagers, have been linked to risky behaviour and to feeling low. The point is not to be bored all the time, but to stop running away from every empty minute. A short period of boredom, experts say, is very different from a life without purpose.

So what can we do? Some families have introduced screen-free times, such as during meals or on long car journeys. Some teachers deliberately leave a few quiet minutes at the end of a lesson, with nothing to do but think. And some people simply leave their phones in another room for an hour a day. At first, they report, the silence feels uncomfortable. After a while, however, many of them discover something they had almost forgotten: what their own thoughts sound like.