为什么我们总感觉无聊？

How can anyone feel bored in a world with social media, streaming movies, TV shows on-demand and the ability to download just about every book in the world? It may sound paradoxical, but according to a study published in Communications Psychology by Katy Y.Y. Tam and Michael Inzlicht, digital media makes us more bored.

Studies show that since 2010, the amount of time people report feeling bored has increased dramatically and the trend has intensified over the years. Interestingly, people began reporting greater levels of boredom shortly after we all started using social media on our new smartphones.

Why am I bored all the time?

According to researchers, here's what's happening. Given that we have access to entertainment whenever we like, the bar for what we consider entertaining or stimulating has increased. It's like when someone is an addict and they keep needing more and more of the same substance to get the high they crave.

Further, when we engage in less stimulating activities, such as reading a book or attending a class, we feel even more bored than before the digital revolution because we have become accustomed to heightened levels of stimulation.

Another reason flipping through TikTok leaves you feeling bored and listless is that digital media fragments our attention, making it hard to focus on the activity at hand. We quickly switch between videos and activities, our phones pulse and beep with notifications, and texts pop up on the screen, so it's hard to engage with the content deeply. Also, knowing that we can be distracted at any moment makes it harder to focus. "Digital devices intensify boredom by disrupting attention," the researchers explain.

"Digital media increases boredom through dividing attention, elevating desired levels of engagement, reducing a sense of meaning, and serving as an ineffective boredom coping strategy," Tam and Inzlicht argue in their paper.

These findings are supported by a report from the Netherlands' Radboud University, which recently found that "phone usage wasn't an effective method to alleviate boredom and fatigue and even made these feelings worse in many cases."

As we pointed out with the Dorito Theory a while back, sometimes experiences that aren't fulfilling can still be maximally addictive. As we scroll and scroll and scroll, trying to come across something that cures our boredom, it's time to ask ourselves how we feel after the experience. Did logging in deliver the experience we thought we'd get? Or, did the frantic search for content keep us occupied until the boredom crept in again?

Tam says that we can have more meaningful and less boring experiences with digital media if we find longer-form content that we can immerse ourselves in. However, this may prove more complicated than years ago, as our attention spans are much shorter.

在一个有社交媒体、可在线播放电影、按需观看电视节目，还能下载几乎世界上所有书籍的时代，怎么会有人觉得无聊呢？这听起来可能有些矛盾，但根据凯蒂·Y·Y·谭和迈克尔·因兹利希特发表在《传播心理学》上的一项研究表明，数字媒体让我们感觉更加无聊了。

研究表明，自2010年以来，人们自述感到无聊的时长大幅增加，而且多年来这一趋势愈发明显。有趣的是，就在我们都开始在新智能手机上使用社交媒体后不久，人们就开始表示自己感到更无聊了。

为什么我总是觉得无聊呢？

据研究人员称，情况是这样的。鉴于我们随时都能获得娱乐，我们对于什么算得上有趣或有刺激性的标准提高了。这就好比一个上瘾的人，为了得到他们渴望的那种兴奋感，就需要越来越多的同一种东西。

此外，当我们从事一些刺激性较小的活动，比如读书或上课，我们会觉得比数字革命之前更加无聊，因为我们已经习惯了高强度的刺激。

刷TikTok让你感到无聊又无精打采的另一个原因是，数字媒体分散了我们的注意力，使我们很难专注于手头的活动。我们在视频和各种活动之间快速切换，手机不断有通知闪烁和发出提示音，屏幕上还会弹出短信，所以很难深入地参与到内容当中。而且，知道自己随时可能会分心，这也让我们更难集中注意力。研究人员解释说：“数字设备通过干扰注意力加剧了无聊感。”

谭和因兹利希特在他们的论文中指出：“数字媒体通过分散注意力、提高期望的参与度、降低意义感以及作为一种无效的应对无聊策略，加剧了无聊感。”

荷兰拉德堡德大学的一份报告也支持了这些发现，该报告最近发现：“使用手机并不是缓解无聊和疲劳的有效方法，在很多情况下，甚至会让这些感觉变得更糟。”

正如我们之前在“多力多滋理论”中所指出的，有时候那些不能让人满足的体验仍然可能极具成瘾性。当我们不停地滑动屏幕，试图找到能消除无聊的东西时，是时候问问自己在体验过后的感受了。登录（社交媒体等）是否带来了我们预期的体验？或者说，疯狂地搜索内容只是让我们暂时有事可做，直到无聊感再次袭来？

谭表示，如果我们能找到可以让自己沉浸其中的长篇内容，那么我们就能在使用数字媒体时有更有意义且不那么无聊的体验。然而，这可能比多年前要复杂得多，因为我们的注意力持续时间已经短了很多。

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