Boulet on the subject. I was only on the tail end of the Era of Boredom (and difficulty avoiding other people on public transportation), but I definitely remember it.
That said, it is nice to carve time away from the social media vortex. (Before smartphones, I would get caught in the same loops refreshing websites on my laptop; I didn't perceive it as problematic, possibly because it wasn't as widely shared a phenomenon.)
I tend to think that people underestimate how boring lots of parts of our lives were. I used to spend a lot of time and energy securing ways to keep from being bored during ordinary parts of every day!
Likewise. I was an early smartphone adopter for precisely that reason -- go Nokia N73! I still do, frankly - the number of screens I bring with me when I travel is kind of silly. Even, now, in my bag just for going to work I have a kindle, an iPad and a Switch.
I think there's value to having the experience of being bored. I'm glad that I now have an alternative to being bored, but I'm also glad that I've had the experience of learning to deal with being bored.
We don't need to have Inner Resources anymore.
Life, friends, is boring. We must not say so.
After all, the sky flashes, the great sea yearns,
we ourselves flash and yearn,
and moreover my mother told me as a boy
(repeatingly) 'Ever to confess you're bored
means you have no
Inner Resources.' I conclude now I have no
inner resources, because I am heavy bored.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47534/dream-song-14
I think I used to have an attention span.
I mean, no smartphones.
For TV shows, I still like The Last Airbender (animated series). Also, anything with five robot lions that join to become a big robot is usually pretty good.
The Power Rangers have like a dozen different series. They all suck, but some suck less than the others. I can't remember which.
I think the ability to manage without constantly available entertainment is a good thing to develop while growing up. Once you're an adult, go for it and distract yourself to death* if you want. But I'd hate to think of daydreaming as a facility people would grow up without developing.
*A few months ago while walking to work, a woman in front of me literally walked right out into traffic while texting on her phone. And it wasn't a quiet street, there were lots of cars.
I don't like my relationship with having my nose in my phone, it feels compulsive. But I used to be a compulsive reader of books (I'd get in trouble as a kid walking to school reading. Neighbors would rat me out to my parents) so I think I'm more vulnerable than most to it.
Have you watched A Series of Unfortunate Events (Netflix) or Ronja the Robber's Daughter (Amazon Prime)? My kids like those shows and they're at least watchable for me.
Teen Titans is pretty good. As is Batman, the Brave and the Bold (which is sort of campy in the way that superhero things should be there's even a musical episode). Some mild terror (for the 4 year old).
10: I was that sort of reader, too. But I am sure that it was better for me than this sort of thing. I try quite hard to read proper books when I wake in the morning and before I go sleep rather than the phone, or even kindles. They go on working in my imagination after I have stopped in a way that bitesized stuff just doesn't. Unless it's poetry. I used to memorise poetry on long journeys. I don't think I could do that now and that is a loss.
The most bored I remember ever being, apart from in maths lessons at school, was working in the pallet factory in Sweden for 18 months -- hour long stints of repetitive quite heavy physical labour, with no conversation and then a five minute fag break. But once I had learned to spend the lunch break reading something difficult I found I could think my way back through it with the bits of my brain that weren't keeping my fingers out of the saw. That was valuable.
She-Ra and the Princesses of Power! Probably better for 7+ not 4+.
our kid loooooved the arthur ransome books and also the various bbc versions of them, and also both versions of the railway children - both on the high-end of the age range, but the four year old might be willing to grow into them. actual tv series i am no help bc his favorite for years was c'est pas sorcier (great, if you put aside the intensely annoying theme music) but wrong language for you guys! highly recommend for anyone with a francophone kid.
was actually knocked off my bike by a *pedestrian* on my actual birthday earlier this month and am still recovering. the clueless one was talking on her phone and walked out against the light, i was just starting up from a stop and looking out for cars coming the other way. it could have been worse obvs but i ended up with a couple of badly bruised ribs that continue to be mightily painful plus a hellaciously bruised abdominal wall. a freaking pedestrian!!! and she never stopped talking on her phone, even when she was down for the count. amazing.
I still read a fair bit, but not like when I was a kid or a teenager, when I'd go to the library on a Saturday morning, and then go back in the late afternoon to return the three I'd read, and get some more. When I had manual jobs, I was a cleaner for a few years, I used to use that time to think (for essays, seminar papers, etc) and I used to find I kept myself quite amused. I used to also set myself challenges -- doing things in a particularly elegant or efficient way,* or extra fast or whatever, just to stop getting bored.
* or riding the floor buffer.
I recently read something about depression in teenagers being linked to smartphones, which seems impossible to measure but maybe there's something there.
I would want to control for (1) social-media use, specifically, and (2) average hours slept.
On #1, I hold the (perhaps extreme) opinion that social media is absolutely toxic for middle and high schoolers and should probably be prohibited for minors. All the SnapChatGrams are an amplifier for shitty bullying behaviors, and I wouldn't be surprised at all to see a correlation between an increase in social-media use and an increase in teen depression.
On #2, I'm guessing kids sleep less when they can take their phones to bed with them.
I have to confiscate the phone every night.
ISTR papers showing depression directly correlated with social media use.
"ASSOCIATION BETWEEN SOCIAL MEDIA USE AND DEPRESSION AMONG U.S. YOUNG ADULTS"
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/da.22466
On the television front, my 9yo stepdaughter watches a lot of America's Funniest Home Videos, which isn't the worst. The worst was Jessie, but thankfully that era has passed in our household.
We have also enjoyed various hi-def nature documentaries available on the streaming services.
I used to read just a ton more books as a teenager. Plenty were terrible sci-fi and fantasy, and some were great sci-fi and history. But I also read Ulysses, and Austen, and the Gay Science, actually, for who knows what reason, and Marx and Hegel (degree of comprehension was low, but I had a Communist determination to read them all anyway, which determination I now lack), and Henry James, but also Sax Rohmer and the ultimately unsatisfying Gödel, Escher, Bach. I played tabletop games. I did art almost everyday. I retreated into elaborate fantasy worlds (I still do this, to the point where I wonder if I have maladaptive daydreaming). After a certain age, like 12, I lost the true crushing boredom of youth, which depths we can't even remember because the mind is kind to us. Once I could construct the worlds and flesh them out section by section, and create warring factions, and magic with strict rules, and a brutal ascent to the throne, each world lasting six months and no more, (though I revisit them sometimes), I could never be bored again. The internet has destroyed my novel reading to a great degree, and made me do less painting. Nothing can stop me from building galactic empires where faster than light drives work but kill half the crew at random for reasons no one can discern and against which there is no protection.
also, watch adventure time! I cried when the show ended, more than once. it starts a little silly and rocky but becomes an epic story in which you care deeply about the most minor characters. steven universe is also excellent, like really superb, with great music, but nothing can compare to adventure time. sorry, commenters with other recommendations, your choices are objectively wrong. or rather, some of the shows are quite good, but none can compare to adventure time.
My son liked Adventure Time, but I was never able to get into it.
Airbender, Adventure time (especially the Nightosphere stretch of the show), Scooby-Doo animated full-length movies, Babe Pig in the City, Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd.
the ultimately unsatisfying Gödel, Escher, Bach.
So glad it wasn't just me.
Seconding or thirding both the Last Airbender and Adventure Time
16.2 I took your revenge. The other week heading up a narrow path up to the Museum of Islamic Art to catch a film 4 young dudes walking abreast were coming down the other way, one of them in my direct path had his phone out and was holding it in front and was in my direct path. I figured he would see me at the last moment and make way by angling his body sideways as I was about to do but the idiot didn't look up and he walked into me with his phone hitting my shoulder and then the ground with that tell-tale sound of shattered screen. I felt bad momentarily but not bad enough that I didn't say loudly "watch were you're walking" as I continued on my way without looking back.
1. Worry? Maybe a tiny bit, but not much. As for actual honest-to-god daydreaming, I still can do a little on easy stretches of my commute by bike, at the gym, and in bed, and there are some leisure activities I can basically zone out during. As for all the other times I have my phone out - on the bus, while watching TV, at the table after Atossa has excused herself - if smartphones weren't a thing, I'm pretty sure I'd just be killing time some other way, and it probably wouldn't be much more productive or edifying.
2. No suggestions from me for TV shows - I can think of lots of movies appropriate for kids and adults, but few shows - but I'm planning to revisit this thread tonight or this weekend. It might be good for us to have a list like this, now or very soon.
23, 28. Nagel and Newman's short book for laypeople on Godel is good.
We have also enjoyed various hi-def nature documentaries available on the streaming services.
Which ones? All I can think of is David Attenborough and those have been a bit slow for our kids.
At times we've stumbled upon really amazing documentaries on PBS that we all loved, but I can't figure out what we were watching.
It's becoming more clear what I'm looking for: something that's not a kid show qua kid show, but a kid could get immersed in. Something where I might say, once in a while, "I'm choosing a show I like, anyone want to join me?" (ie I'd never choose a cartoon.)
You should just sit your kids down and make them watch Wallander until everything else seems cheerful and fast paced.
Maybe skip the first episode. The opening is really upsetting.
29: When someone's going to collide with me, and I feel I'm in the right--because they're walking against traffic, not giving me any space, whatever--I stop moving right before impact. Let the force be entirely on them, in case anything comes out of it. I think what you did was fine, though.
I just shout "Excuse me" in a passive-aggressive way.
33: heebie you would like both avatar: the last airbender and adventure time! cartoons can be sweeping epic fantasy worlds that blow your mind! give them a chance, really, keeping in mind that the very first bit is often not yet hitting its stride. the anime nichijou is laugh out loud hilarious from the start (I grant dispensation to watch subs given the small children.) and actually naruto is pretty great; the internet tells you which are filler episodes to skip--they didn't yet have the material they labeled the second season (it was just unified continued story in the manga but the anime makers had nothing to work with till my beloved kishimoto-sensei came up with more volumes.) naturally it's better to just read all 75 volumes--it looks vastly better and the paneling is gorgeous. naruto is on some level silly, how not, but I care about all those people and the twists are so genuinely unexpected that it's addictive.
my aversion to dubs is showing through there--I meant dubs.
"Adam Ruins Everything" is a bit much for a four-year-old, but still maybe watchable. Older kids dig it, and it's still fun for grownups. (Or at least I like it, and I'm a reasonable proxy for a grownup.)
my aversion to dubs is showing through there--I meant dubs.
I was going to say. "All right you little monsters, read all you fucking want!"
Naruto screams, like all the time.
I'm going to lose some cinephile street cred here but I like some anime dubs, principally FLCL and Death Note.
33: What about The Great British Baking Show? It's adult TV, but relentlessly positive and cheery and nothing a kid won't get (other than all the technical obscurities of baking, but not knowing those beforehand is part of how you're supposed to experience the show). And it's more entertaining than you'd think from that description.
No for kids and I've said it in the other thread but holy shit, go see Jordan Peele's "Us" and don't read anything about it before.
23: What's wrong with Goedel Escher Bach? It's a very very good doodle, in book form.
I was so deeply, soul-crushingly bored in school it terrifies me still. I remember the grain of my wooden desk and the tremor of the minute hand. I remember sitting in my back yard the summer after second grade thinking that my subjective experience of each successive summer was more fleeting than the last, as it took up a smaller proportion of my life, that each day would seem shorter and shorter until time plunged me back into that room. I don't miss it, particularly.
I remember the grain of my wooden desk and the tremor of the minute hand.
Oh man. Replace "grain of my wooden desk" with "lacquer of the laminate in fake wood grain pattern of my desk" and this put me vividly back in school. Specifically staring at clocks.
Oh, Malcolm in the Middle
32. Planet Earth II Islands chapter has an excellent lizard vs snakes chase scene.
49. Diffuse and self-indulgent, twee in the worst places, the model for a reduced version of the Godel theorem barely works
I was going to suggest Malcolm in the Middle, but lw beat me to it.
Also agree with 46. My nephews (ages 4 and 6) love the Great British Baking Show (who doesn't?), but be forewarned: the 6-year old is now drawing sketches of the elaborate cake he expects his mother to make for his seventh birthday!...
Ronja is so good. It has an enjoyable slow pace, with lots of lingering scenes of pre-smartphone rural life.
Which ones? All I can think of is David Attenborough and those have been a bit slow for our kids.
Yeah, it was one of the Attenborough ones (Blue Planet? Life?). But in fairness, probably 34% of the time spent watching is actually time spent trying to imitate David Attenborough's accent.
Merlin was a pretty good show for my son. Now he's watching Rick and Morty which, maybe not so much.
I started memorizing things in high school and killed time waiting for the bus by repeating them to myself silently.
Adventure Time and Avatar thirded or fourthed or whatever. Great shows. The former may skew a bit older though, at least in appreciating the jokes (and certainly the references).
Adventure Time and Avatar thirded or fourthed
+1
I don't know why I never got into Adventure Time. Maybe the dog sounded too much like Bender?
45: you monster! no, I just find subs weird somehow. and I like hearing the japanese hey speaking of dubs v subs you should all watch the german netflix show dark, with subs because the dub is hilariously bad, just, they picked the wrong actors or didn't try to line it up with the lip movements, or something. my 14-year-old adored it but it's very much not for little kids. naturally of everyone I have a thing for the child-murderer. I did check his other movie appearances and he's legitimately hot, so on the positive side I'm not being solely motivated by an attraction to evil. on the negative side he resembles my stepfather so maybe I am being motivated by an attraction to evil. (though to be scrupulously fair, my stepfather was a very handsome man, as I am reminded when going through photos in the wake of my moms death. I'm looking for the best ones of him to scan, photoshop, and give to my sister, which task I somewhat wish I had not taken it upon myself to do.)
58: adventure time is still appreciable by children even if they don't get the references; our kinds started very young and then watched all seven seasons, so it was a huge part of their life. it's like looney tunes, fun for kids, meta-fun for adults.
sure, you try teaching them that. they're total monsters until they're...uh...8. girl x asked me in fifth grade "when do boys stop fighting so much and pretending to be smart even when they're not and only caring about who has the latest cool things." I had to be like, "35???" her "no really!". me "45?".
Yes, it's worse than explaining algebra.
Second Almeida's recommendations of Adventure Time and Stephen Universe. Also Over the Garden Wall.
Also, when my kid was that age, we watched a lot of Supernanny. My kid was appalled at how terrible the kids and parents were, and we could talk about appropriate behavior and parenting, which was fun.
Thirding, fourthing, whatever Airbender (and the followup Korra) and Steven Universe. I also found the My Little Pony series that started the Brony trend pretty tolerable. For non-cartoons you're in a tough spot--Great British Baking Show might be good, I've gotten some mileage out of cooking shows in general, and for the right kids something like This Old House might work.
As to the phone thing--I am absolutely the worst about this. I had to leave the DMV after waiting 30 minutes when my phone died because I realized I was not able to face the prospect of just sitting for another 30 minutes. But I had the same problem before the phone--I just always had a book with me. Both my girls (14 and 11) have phones, but are forbidden social media. They seem to get around that by just having large group text chats constantly going.