Children should be allowed to get bored

[Esper]

Title taken right from this BBC article. It that says boredom spurs creativity. Being bored gets you to come up with your own stimulation instead of relying on a computer or game or television. It also implies that people who lack "interior resources" to deal with boredom could end up as vandals or other ne'er-do-wells.

So is boredom good for the kids? For their creativity or general upbringing? Should we have less outside stimulation? Is there some connection between lack of creativity and bad behavior?


Article is in the spoiler if ya want to read it.

Spoiler:

Children should be allowed to get bored, expert says

Children should be allowed to get bored so they can develop their innate ability to be creative, an education expert says.

Dr Teresa Belton told the BBC cultural expectations that children should be constantly active could hamper the development of their imagination

She quizzed author Meera Syal and artist Grayson Perry about how boredom had aided their creativity as children.

Syal said boredom made her write, while Perry said it was a "creative state".

The senior researcher at the University of East Anglia's School of Education and Lifelong Learning interviewed a number of authors, artists and scientists in her exploration of the effects of boredom.

She heard Syal's memories of the small mining village, with few distractions, where she grew up.

Dr Belton said: "Lack of things to do spurred her to talk to people she would not otherwise have engaged with and to try activities she would not, under other circumstances, have experienced, such as talking to elderly neighbours and learning to bake cakes.

"Boredom is often associated with solitude and Syal spent hours of her early life staring out of the window across fields and woods, watching the changing weather and seasons.

"But importantly boredom made her write. She kept a diary from a young age, filling it with observations, short stories, poems, and diatribe. And she attributes these early beginnings to becoming a writer late in life."

'Reflection'

The comedienne turned writer said: "Enforced solitude alone with a blank page is a wonderful spur."

While Perry said boredom was also beneficial for adults: "As I get older, I appreciate reflection and boredom. Boredom is a very creative state."

And neuroscientist and expert on brain deterioration Prof Susan Greenfield, who also spoke to the academic, recalled a childhood in a family with little money and no siblings until she was 13.

"She happily entertained herself with making up stories, drawing pictures of her stories and going to the library."

Dr Belton, who is an expert in the impact of emotions on behaviour and learning, said boredom could be an "uncomfortable feeling" and that society had "developed an expectation of being constantly occupied and constantly stimulated".

But she warned that being creative "involves being able to develop internal stimulus".

"Nature abhors a vacuum and we try to fill it," she said. "Some young people who do not have the interior resources or the responses to deal with that boredom creatively then sometimes end up smashing up bus shelters or taking cars out for a joyride."

'Short circuit'

The academic, who has previously studied the impact of television and videos on children's writing, said: "When children have nothing to do now, they immediately switch on the TV, the computer, the phone or some kind of screen. The time they spend on these things has increased.

"But children need to have stand-and-stare time, time imagining and pursuing their own thinking processes or assimilating their experiences through play or just observing the world around them."

It is this sort of thing that stimulates the imagination, she said, while the screen "tends to short circuit that process and the development of creative capacity".

Syal adds: "You begin to write because there is nothing to prove, nothing to lose, nothing else to do.

"It's very freeing being creative for no other reason other than you freewheel and fill time."

Dr Belton concluded: "For the sake of creativity perhaps we need to slow down and stay offline from time to time."

 

[TRIFORCE89]

Well, even imagination requires props. Even if as simple as a box.

Should I have kids one day, I wouldn't have a problem with them watching TV or movies or playing games. 'Cause I certainly had all that as a kid. But, I also had toys. And I drew. And I had puzzles. Played in a tent. Made a fort. Etc. Increasingly, I've noticed that a DVD player or an iPad has become the toy replacement, when it really shouldn't. They're an accompaniment.

 

[Echidna]

I am so an expert on this I can't even start to...
Ok so, my answer is yes. Boredom does very much inspire creativity. In fact, most of my ideas for forum-skins and/or logos came from a point of boredom, mostly in class. Now putting it like that does make it sound like a bad thing, wasting my time in Physics class to think up a design. Regardless, that isn't the topic at hand here.

Boredom is not the lack of thought, as many presume, it's the lack of action. Sitting somewhere with nothing to do whatsoever, or perhaps trying to do something that the person at hand is not the least bit interested in. Cases like these do in fact stimulate our minds, cause us to think. The problem is that people tend to use times like these to think about their lives. Some reflect on their past. Some simply plan the rest of their day.

So in a sense, boredom can inspire creativity, but only if something that requires and/or accepts creativity is involved in the persons life. Again I'll take myself as an example, simply because I don't talk to people about what goes on in their dirty little heads. I myself am into graphics and web design. So naturally, when I have nothing to do, my mind tends to stray towards said topics. And because activities like these do include a certain amount of ingenuity which in turns calls for creativity (you can argue that the two are one and the same, but they really aren't), I tend to get creative. The craziest, yet most ingenious ideas (if I may say so myself) come to me when I have nothing else to do.

So yeah, point in case, it's possible, but it depends.

 

[gimmepie]

Firstly I'll say this, boredom can spur creativity but it can also lead to reckless and/or destructive behaviour.

So, should we go out of our way to make kids bored? Whilst I think young kids are certainly better of with a box of toys and a drawing book than an iPad I don't see any reason to make sure our kids are bored. We should give them plenty of opportunities for simulation but that stimulation should require the use of their imagination or some thinking the majority of the time. But sometimes there's nothing wrong with playing with a mindless app to pass a couple of minutes time.

 

[Shiny Celebi]

I dunno. For some kids it may inspire creativity but for others they might just watch hours of TV or go online. My sister personally watches hours and hours of TV when she has nothing to do and goes on Facebook, not create things, draw, etc. I dont think it works for everyone.

 

[Esper]

Firstly I'll say this, boredom can spur creativity but it can also lead to reckless and/or destructive behaviour.

So, should we go out of our way to make kids bored? Whilst I think young kids are certainly better of with a box of toys and a drawing book than an iPad I don't see any reason to make sure our kids are bored. We should give them plenty of opportunities for simulation but that stimulation should require the use of their imagination or some thinking the majority of the time. But sometimes there's nothing wrong with playing with a mindless app to pass a couple of minutes time.

I don't think anyone thinks spending a few minutes with an app on an iPad is bad, but that if most of your time is spent on iPads or whatever then you're relying on those things to entertain you and stimulate you. I think the distinction they're trying to make is like one between giving a kid an mp3 player and giving them a musical instrument. They're got something to play with, but with one they're more passive and with the other they're more active.

I dunno. For some kids it may inspire creativity but for others they might just watch hours of TV or go online. My sister personally watches hours and hours of TV when she has nothing to do and goes on Facebook, not create things, draw, etc. I dont think it works for everyone.

I think the idea is that you're not "bored" if you're watching TV or on the internet since you've got outside stimulation that way. Even if you're bored of what you're watching, you're still relying on something outside of yourself to fill your attention instead of, as the article suggests, stimulating yourself from within your own head and creative efforts.

 

[Kanzler]

... Boredom is not the lack of thought, as many presume, it's the lack of action...

That's a really insightful perspective! So using videogames/TV to solve "boredom" would deal with the lack of action, but encourage the lack of thought, making kids less creative? For a non-bored person, they're usually doing something they enjoy, so the need for both thought and action is satisfied. From this point of view, it appears that videogames/TV would satisfy action at the expense of thought. And procrastination would be satisfying thought without action! XD

 

[awesomesoxfox]

I think being bored could encourage a creative person to do something creative but, as is evident from people I know, some cause trouble when bored simply to be doing something they find entertaining.