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Johnathan Seaburn's avatar

I disagree doing and being bored can lead to creative ideas, introspection and contemplation.

Mindless scrolling that purposely entices you by using elaborate attention sucking algorithms dulls the mind and doesn’t give you a chance to just sit and think.

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Akiyama's avatar
3dEdited

Yes, I agree with you.

I don't watch short-form videos, but I sometimes get sucked into watching fairly pointless videos on YouTube for hours, and afterwards I don't feel that this was a good use of my time, compared with anything I might have otherwise been doing (sleeping, reading, housework, writing, exercise, listening to music, watching a film, chatting to my wife, researching stuff I'm interested in etc.).

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a_real_society's avatar

I agree that you could be doing those things, but my point is most people won't do something better, even if they could.

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Dr B's avatar

Idk man, I can remember my life before phones and I spent a hell of a lot less time “doing nothing” and a lot more time socializing, writing, making music etc

Small example - my university when I was in school in the late aughts used to have hundreds of entrants in the Battle of the Bands. We had prelim rounds to weed people out. This year I went and there were less than two dozen acts. People can cope about the culprit all they want but the actual reason is that scrolling TikTok is more entertaining than fucking around on a guitar, which is more entertaining than TV or doing nothing

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