Boredom across the lifespan

Reprinted with permission of the President and Fellows of Harvard College, from Out of My Skull by James Danckert and John D. Eastwood (Copyright 2020).

Teenagers and septuagenarians are both deeply uneasy when they have too much time on their hands and nothing to do with it. We're not built to have endless hours of wandering through a mall when school is over. And we're not built to sit at home and watch game shows and soap operas all day to fill out our retirement years. Boredom at the bookends of life, from cradle to grave, signals to us that we need something more. 

To date, boredom has been examined through a fairly narrow lens in terms of age. By far the most commonly tested age group is 17-to 22-year-olds – undergraduate students at universities around the world where most of this research happens. In this group, boredom propensity declines with age. But does this mean that there is a steady march toward lower boredom as we age or are there peaks and valleys? Are there predictors early in life that could tell us who will be more or less prone to boredom? And does boredom at the end of life have the same causes that it does at the beginning?

One of the first studies to say anything about boredom across the life span was actually more interested in one of boredom's opposites – curiosity. Leonard Giambra and colleagues from the National Institute on Aging in Baltimore examined curiosity and sensation-seeking across the life span. As a corollary to these experiences, his group also looked at the tendency to feel bored. They found, as we and many others have, that boredom levels decline in the late teen and early adult years. But they went beyond the early twenties and saw continued decline into the fifties. Beyond the sixties, however, boredom levels started to gradually rise again, particularly in women.

This changing relationship between a tendency to boredom ("boredom proneness") and age invites a fascinating question: Is boredom changing across the life span for specific reasons? We note that the decline in being prone to boredom in the late teens and early twenties parallels the final stages of neural development.

This might be one explanation for the observed changes in boredom. That is, as the frontal cortex comes fully online, the propensity to experience boredom declines. The subtle rise in boredom at the other end of the age spectrum may also be related to the frontal cortex – this time due to a decline in function within this brain region that accompanies normal aging.

Circumstances too likely explain the relationship between age and boredom proneness. At precisely the time that the frontal cortex is reaching full maturation, most countries also imbue their citizens with a swathe of rights, responsibilities, and freedoms. Being able to drive, vote, join the army, consume alcohol, all signal a change in our environment and our own capacity to interact with that environment that gives a greater sense of agency and leaves less room for boredom. There is simply more opportunity for self-determination, more stuff we can do to stave off boredom. And what of middle age? Here, a different set of responsibilities descends on us that could simply preclude the experience of boredom for most. With careers, spouses, children, and mortgages there may simply be less opportunity to feel bored in our middle decades. Retirement brings with it a release from many of those responsibilities. But if the environment or our own physical and mental limits do not allow full utilization of our abilities, we risk becoming disengaged and isolated and boredom may rise again.

When it comes to explaining changing levels of boredom proneness across age we are largely left to speculate, as there is very little research on the topic, which is somewhat surprising given that informal observations about age and boredom have been made for quite some time. We simply do not know for sure what biological or social factors differentially impact boredom levels across the age spectrum. Clearly, we have a lot of work to do.

"I'm Bored!"

Anecdotally all parents know well the experience of their children pleading with them to remedy their ennui. Most of us simply dismiss boredom in children as their failing. Given our description of boredom, dismissing it as trivial and suggesting multiple avenues to remedy the boredom clearly misses the point – boredom does not arise from a lack of things to do, or as a consequence of diminished motivation to engage. Just the opposite. Bored children know there are many things in the world to do and clearly want something that will satisfy them. What they are struggling with is the "how to" of that equation. The fact that they demand we fix it for them may simply reflect the reality of their surroundings. As their parents we control much of their world, so why not this part too? Unfortunately, we may be predisposed to tune them out when they're bored. It turns out that oxytocin – the bonding hormone – triggers an increase in empathy to crying children only when we think their cry indicates that they are ill. When we deem their wailing to be driven by boredom, our oxytocin remains silent and we are unmoved. So bored children are left to figure things out on their own – which, in the long run, might actually be best for everyone involved.

Childhood boredom, routinely dismissed by parents, has also been overlooked in the research world. Understanding boredom in childhood, and indeed across the full spectrum of age ranges, is hampered by design constraints that all studies interested in changes over time face. Ideally, we would conduct longitudinal work – start looking at boredom in the preschool years and follow the same individuals for as long as we can. It's unlikely that we could follow them all the way to the end of their lives, but even trying to capture a five-to ten-year range is challenging. Given this challenge, we are left with what are referred to as cross-sectional studies – exploring boredom in different groups of individuals at each age range of interest. 

Studying boredom in very young children presents other challenges. When 4- year- olds say they are bored, are they using the word in the same way we are? Beyond that definitional issue, even using the word boredom may be seen as taboo in classroom settings where young children spend most of their time. Whatever the challenges are, the consequence is that little has been done to understand boredom in anyone younger than 10 years of age. In one study researchers asked third- and fourth- graders about their experience of boredom and related their responses to math and reading abilities. Boredom was associated with poor academic achievement, but it was most strongly related to reading. Kids with better reading skills re-ported lower levels of boredom. Reading demands imagination to turn words into images, dialogue into imagined accents, scenes into dynamic mental events. Better reading skills then, may reflect higher levels of imagination, which in turn reflect a stronger engagement with the material. We would argue that effective engagement with whatever you are doing is critical to stave off boredom. Grades three and four mark an import ant transition from learning- to- read to reading- to- learn. If a child is struggling to read, it becomes more and more difficult for them to engage with classroom activities. Unfortunately, studies like this one represent a snapshot in time. They don't tell us what factors might explain changing boredom levels with age.

Boredom has long been associated with increased sensation seeking and risk taking in adults. In children, Mary Russo and colleagues from the University of Georgia suggest there are modest increases in sensation seeking beginning around age 7 that continue into early adolescence. This, combined with limits in self-determination, is potentially a recipe for rising boredom levels. On the one hand, a child wants to seek and experience new sensations. On the other hand, their capacity for self-determination – not just to choose what they want to do, but to execute their desired goals accurately – is limited first by their own developing cognitive and physical capacities and second by the external constraints imposed on them by parents and society. This clash between abilities and the constraints of the world becomes even more evident as we move from childhood into adolescence.

The Rising Tide

On North Baffin Island, 11- and 12- year- old Inuit boys accompany their fathers into the wild to hone hunting skills. Girls in many cultures take part in rituals tied to observable biological changes, often coinciding with their first experience of menstruation. Boys as young as 7 or 8 on the island of Vanuatu jump from a tower nearing thirty meters high with their feet bound by a less than bungee- like vine to celebrate ascendency to adulthood. What each of these traditions has in common is a culturally defined transition from childhood into teenage years, often at a time when many of our more sophisticated cognitive abilities start to come on line. This transition may also represent a key point in the expression of boredom across the life span.

It seems like a cruel joke: the more capable we become of exerting influence on the world, the more we open ourselves up to boredom. This stems from our assertion that boredom arises from failed attempts to engage with the world. As our capacity to engage expands with the development of new cognitive skills, so too will the possibility of finding our newfound capacities underutilized. And this will be especially true if the world does not yet afford us a full suite of options for action, which is true for most teenagers. Teens are faced with either restrictions on their possible behaviors or too much time on their hands with too little to do. Either way, boredom ensues.

Many of the rituals just mentioned follow the biological transition into adolescence far more closely than any particular chronological age. Along with the rush of hormones and heightened emotional intensity comes newfound cognitive abilities. The newly minted teenager is on the doorstep, not just of increased emotional intensity and complexity, but of improved capacity for thinking in the abstract, for complex problem-solving, and for reasoning through challenges in a logical manner. It's what makes teenagers what they are – emotionally intense, cognitively flourishing, and infuriating to argue with.

Yet, developments in emotion and cognition within the teenager do not follow the same trajectory. On the one hand, the emotional networks of the brain experience rapid changes due to the flood of hormones, while on the other hand, the cognitive, reasoning system starts its gradual creep toward full adult capacity over the decade of the teen years and beyond. As Ronald Dahl, a researcher at the University of Pittsburgh, suggests, this is akin to "starting the engines with an unskilled driver" behind the wheel. Others have even suggested that these two systems, with their distinct developmental and functional profiles, are in conflict with one another—a kind of push-pull of emotion and reason.

This model implies that increased sensitivity to reward and intense emotions, coupled with a developing but incomplete capacity to deal with these emotions, may be at the heart of rising boredom levels over the teenage years. All of this may also intensify sensation seeking. Developing cognitive skills require an outlet, and this drive may push the teen toward both curiosity and information seeking, as well as seeking out the thrill of experiencing new things. 

This is a complex maze of circumstances the teen must navigate. They experience a strong drive to express themselves and explore the world, are unable to rationally corral and control their intense emotionality, and continually run smack into intransigent adults with their rules and limits. Teenagers must attend schools with class schedules decided for them. Parents determine most extracurricular activities and restrict time with friends, time spent on screens, and so on. These constraints operate to counteract a strong urge in the teenager – the desire for autonomy or self-determination. Certainly, in one study of college students, the most prevalent term used to describe the experience of boredom was "restlessness," perhaps born of the desire to break out of the constraints imposed by the learning environment. 

The flip side to such constraint is having too much time with nothing to do, another hotbed for boredom. By some estimates, around 40 percent of adolescents' time is free time. And for many teens this so-called leisure time is boring. Teens with ample time on their hands, elevated levels of sensation seeking, and few outlets deemed likely to satisfy are underutilizing their skills and are prone to becoming bored. 

A recent study of youth in South Africa provides a good example; youth who had more free time also engaged in higher levels of sexual activity. Boredom played a key role. In general, youth in this study who had lower levels of employment, lower socioeconomic status, and more free time reported higher levels of both boredom and restlessness. The study was one of the few that was longitudinal, tracking teens over two years of high school. Those who reported higher levels of boredom at grade nine were, the following year, more sexually active and more sexually aggressive. Males who reported higher levels of boredom in grade nine were also more likely to engage in riskier sexual behaviors, such as not using a condom or having casual sexual encounters. In a similar vein, a study of youth in rural New Mexico found that increased levels of boredom were associated with more unstructured time and limited opportunities for engaging in meaningful activities. In turn, these teens also engaged in higher rates of drug use and were more likely to be involved in "trouble making." Clearly, being bored and having too much free time on your hands has consequences. 

Risky sex, drug taking, and trouble making. All may represent a constellation of teenage desires: to assert independence, to seek new experiences, to fulfil the promise of newly developed skills. When pitted against an environment constrained through parental control, institutional restrictions, or a lack of opportunities, boredom thrives. Then, just when the teenage years have hit the height of emotional turbulence, from age 17 onward boredom levels start to drop. This drop comes at precisely the age when opportunities for autonomy and self-expression open up and at a time when the capacity for self-control starts to mature.

I'm an Adult Now

From an institutional point of view, 17-and 18-year-old are leaving the school system either for employment or further education in environments — universities and colleges — rife with choice. They are bestowed with rights and responsibilities they never had, from voting and driving cars to legally consuming alcohol (at least in some parts of the world). 

This explosion of freedom and opportunity at the tail end of the teenage years is likely to be only part of the reason boredom levels dip. As we've already suggested, the onset of puberty might signal a potential rise in boredom, independent of any specific chronological age. Here, in the later teen years, chronological age may once again be less relevant than the biological processes churning away in the background. By 18, as that complex emotional soup of human existence has been unfolding, teens have begun honing the cognitive skills needed to better act on desires and goals. There is still some way to go – the brain is not fully developed until the early to mid-twenties. But by the late teens, there is tangible progress in development of the part of the brain known as the frontal cortex.

The frontal cortex of the brain acts as a kind of CEO for the rest – controlling complex behaviors based on information fed forward to the frontal cortex by brain regions dedicated to more basic sensory and motor processing. Functions like abstract reasoning – being able to conceive of such things as beauty or bravery; planning ahead – the kind of future thinking that enables humans to chart out their career paths; and inhibitory control – being able to stifle a laugh at a funeral, all count as executive functions. Each of these things is considered an executive function because it is complex, multifaceted, and invoked in a seemingly voluntary, willful manner. In short, the development of the frontal cortex enables a greater degree of self-control and autonomy. 

Noting what happens when a person of any age experiences damage to this critical part of the brain bolsters our notion that the decreases in boredom seen in early adulthood are related to development of the frontal cortex. All too often car accidents, sports concussions, and barroom brawls lead to traumatic brain injury (TBI). Close to 2.8 million people are diagnosed with TBIs every year in the United States alone. The parts of the brain most affected by this are the frontal cortex, and the sine qua non of TBI is what experts refer to as dysexecutive syndrome. For some time now, clinicians working with people who have experienced brain injury have noted that patients often complain of boredom. Our own data show that in TBI patients self-reported levels of boredom are higher than in healthy individuals – something that until now we had only suspected to be true from anecdotal accounts and clinical experience. For our patients this was not simply a response to the monotony of hospital life, given they had all long since been discharged. Instead, it seems as if something has been altered in people who have suffered a TBI that makes it more difficult for them to engage with their world in a satisfying, meaningful way. It is likely that impaired levels of self-regulation and control represent the key changes that drive an increase in boredom among TBI survivors. Conversely, increased development in these functions in the late teenage years might be precisely what causes the rapidly diminishing levels of boredom just as we venture into adulthood. What is also clear from the data is that boredom continues to fall, even after full brain maturation is long behind us. 

Middle Age, Middle Boredom?

Notably, during midlife, a time infamous for dissatisfaction and acting out—for men embodied in the ubiquitous purchase of an impractical sports car – people seem less likely to report boredom. Returning to the Giambra study we see that boredom levels drop from the twenties onward, hitting a floor in the fifties before a slight rise in the sixties and beyond. This pattern of declining boredom during midlife was recently confirmed by Alycia Chin and colleagues, 33 who collected an enormous amount of experience sampling data from close to 4,000 Americans with an average age of 44. Consistent with Giambra, Chin found that older adults were less likely to report boredom. It's worth noting that the decline in boredom was not linear. That is, while the boredom levels of a 25-year-old were four times higher than those of a 45-year-old, the boredom levels of 45-and 60-year-olds were comparable to each other. 

Thanks to Chin and colleagues, we also have some sense of what boredom looks like including in mid-life. First, they found that boredom did indeed occur at least once over a seven-to ten-day period for 63 percent of people enrolled in their study. Of seventeen different feelings reported, boredom made it into the top ten, at number seven. Of the negative feelings reported, boredom was the fourth most common, right behind exhaustion, frustration, and indifference. When it did occur, boredom was often associated with other negative feelings, such as loneliness and anger and sadness. So, despite the fact that boredom rates continue to drop into our middle years, it is not as though boredom disappears altogether. It remains very much a part of our everyday lives. 

Research by Chin and her colleagues may also provide some clues as to why boredom levels decline from young adulthood to midlife. The key might be how younger and older people spend their time. It turns out, based on this study, that people report boredom most often when they are studying, attending school or college, and associating with people they do not know. It is reasonable to think that younger people, rather than older adults, are more likely to find themselves in these circumstances. The notion that boredom is less common among older individuals because of how they spend their time was at least partially confirmed by Chin and colleagues' statistical analysis. In fact, they reached the more general conclusion that boredom is largely determined by the situations people find themselves in as opposed to differences between people, such as their age. 

Truth be told, we know very little about midlife boredom, and this lack of research may itself indirectly implicate the role of life circumstances in boredom at midlife. That is, perhaps those in midlife are simply too preoccupied with building careers, starting families, and taking on responsibilities like mortgages to participate in research studies, and these same factors that keep them out of researchers' labs may also be responsible for the relatively lower levels of boredom they experience.     

What this contrast between young adults and those in the middle of life highlights is the influence of one's circumstances on the potential to suffer from boredom. Contextual influences stretch well beyond careers and mortgages. The impact of environmental context is evident in the elderly too, and this may converge with changes in cognitive skills to fuel a late-life surge in boredom.

Boredom in the Elderly

Throughout we have claimed that boredom arises when the desire to engage with the world goes unfulfilled, and we feel mentally unoccupied. For the elderly, two key culprits foment this breeding ground for boredom. First, as we age our cognitive capacity declines, giving rise to challenges of self-control and attention that we know are associated with increased boredom. Second, as we age our networks of social contacts decrease, as do environmental opportunities for engaging in satisfying activities. These two culprits likely conspire, each amplifying the effect of the other. 

Ronán Conroy and colleagues from the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland examined a group of people sixty-five years and older to figure out what was associated with cognitive decline in this population. They found three key factors: low social support (people living alone with low external social supports), diminished personal cognitive reserve (low levels of social activity and leisure exercise, increased levels of loneliness and boredom), and lower levels of sociodemographic cognitive reserve (people living in rural communities and with lower levels of education). Cutting through the technical jargon, it was loneliness and boredom that were associated with reduced cognitive function. Loneliness and boredom in the elderly may more generally represent a failure to optimally engage with the world. That failure may be driven, at least in part, by a decline in cognitive functioning. Certainly, research shows that cognitive decline in the elderly is predominantly evident in the area of planning and self-regulation, both executive functions – those same functions, normally supported by frontal cortex, that may keep boredom at bay in the late teens and early twenties. 

Tragically, just when the ravages of time degrade the cognitive function of many, so too time steals away opportunities for satisfying engagement with the world. Friends slip away, physical ailments limit our capacity to engage in ways we used to, and external circumstances become more restrictive – all putting us at more risk for boredom. The changes seen in later life can leave us under-challenged and under aroused. 

Gillian Ice from Ohio University suggests that nursing home residents spend close to half their day doing next to nothing—sleeping, watching television, and engaging in other passive activities. Clearly, these activities are underwhelming and limit residents' capacity to get energized about life. Indeed, the elderly report higher levels of boredom, which may be an obvious response to having little to nothing to do. Importantly, the elderly also report being restless and fidgety. This combination of lowered physiological arousal and feelings of restlessness is common in the boredom literature throughout the life span, and not surprising to find among the elderly. It's hard to imagine raising one's heart rate by watching daytime television every day! Studies of teens consistently highlight the strange bedfellows of restlessness and lethargy in response to the perceived monotony of life, itself a direct consequence of feeling as though there is nothing to do. So, at the bookends of life, the mechanisms that cause boredom may be the same – a sense that we are underutilizing our skills and talents.  

While pinning down how boredom manifests itself across the life span has been challenging due to the many gaps in research and the lack of longitudinal data, we can glean important themes. Biological milestones are critical: the transition from childhood to teenage years has emotional intensity colliding with developing but incomplete cognitive skills. Toward the tail end of our teenage years and into early adulthood, we see a transition to a more mature brain, one that is better able to exert control over our thoughts and emotions. Later in life a decline in those same capacities then becomes the culprit in the experience of boredom. Circumstances are just as crucial: teens with ample free time on their hands and few outlets for expression find themselves in much the same situation as the elderly living in institutional settings that afford little of consequence to engage with. The river that runs through it all? Whether we are 4, 40, or 80, boredom arises when we feel we are underutilizing our skills and talents. We know we could be doing more and we want to be doing more, but we can't seem to scratch that itch. Whenever it arises, the predicament that boredom signals is no trivial matter.

- Find more on boredom in our archive.

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