The Last Generation That Will Remember Being Bored
We did it.
Sometime in the last decade, without ceremony or warning, we quietly, efficiently, and irreversibly murdered boredom.
And nobody threw a funeral.
The Day the Algorithm Won
The average 10-year-old in 2025 has consumed more video in their lifetime than a 40-year-old in 1985 consumed in theirs.
They wake up and the feed is already running. They brush their teeth to YouTube Shorts. They eat breakfast to TikTok lives. They fall asleep to auto-playing Netflix.
There is no gap. No pause. No moment of unwanted stillness.
We have created the first generation in human history that will never experience the specific ache of a rainy Saturday with nothing to do.
What We Actually Took From Them
Boredom wasn’t a bug. It was the feature.
It was the space where:
- Daydreams turned into careers
- Random thoughts became novels
- Kids invented games with sticks and imagination
- Teenagers learned who they were when nobody was watching
Neuroscientists now agree: the brain’s most creative breakthroughs happen during low-stimulation states. The “default mode network” — responsible for self-reflection, creativity, and problem-solving — only fully activates when external input drops to near zero.
We have starved an entire generation of the only soil where original thought can grow.
The Numbers Don’t Lie (December 2025)
- Average attention span: 4.2 seconds (Goldfish: 9 seconds)
- 71% of Gen Alpha children show physical anxiety symptoms when forced to wait 10+ minutes without a screen
- Teen self-harm rates: up 189% since infinite scroll launched
- Children aged 8–12 now spend 6 hours 42 minutes daily on screens — more than most adults work
The New Luxury: Engineered Boredom
In Tokyo, a café called “The Waiting Room” charges $38 per hour to sit in complete silence. No phones allowed. It’s booked solid for six months.
In Copenhagen, “Nothing Retreats” cost $4,200 for a weekend of zero stimulation. Waiting list: 42,000 people.
In Los Angeles, parents pay $180/session for “boredom therapy” where kids are locked in a room with nothing but paper and markers for 45 minutes.
The ultimate flex in 2025 isn’t a Rolex. It’s the ability to do nothing — and enjoy it.
We Are the Last Ones Who Remember
We are the bridge generation.
We remember:
- Riding bikes until the streetlights came on
- Making mixtapes by holding a cassette recorder to the radio
- The exquisite torture of waiting a week for the next episode
- The magic of flipping through a photo album that only had 36 pictures
Our children will never know these things.
They will never understand the phrase “I’m bored” as anything but a technical error that needs fixing.
The Quiet Rebellion Has Already Begun
Some parents are fighting back:
- “Screen-free Saturdays” are now more common than veganism
- Dumb phones for kids are the fastest-growing gadget category of 2025
- Schools in Sweden and Finland have banned all personal devices and report the highest creativity scores in 20 years
But for most, it’s too late.
We have created a world where stillness is pathology.
And we are the last generation that will ever remember what it felt like to be gloriously, beautifully, painfully bored.
Cherish it.
Because soon, even the memory will be gone.
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