Bored is the New Fit: Part II
Stranger Things and Regulatory Stickers
In the last season of Stranger Things, Will, one of the intrepid yet unfortunate youth of the city of Hawkins, discovers that over the years he has developed the ability to "pick up" signals from good ole' Vecna, the mind-controlling vine villain. This means that while Vecna is in the shadow world of "the Upside Down", Will can receive "signals" and get hints at what Vecna's whereabouts and plans are, acting like a passive radio antenna. Eventually Will and company use this to their advantage.
What may surprise us, though, is this is closer to reality than we might think. Admittedly, reality reflects the "radio interference" aspect and less of the mind control, demagorgon stuff.
The connection between Will, Stranger Things, and our brains is as expected, that odd, jargon-y statement on the back of most electronics:
"This device may not cause harmful interference, and this device must accept any interference received, including interference that may cause undesired operation."
Obvious, right? No? Ok, hear me out.
This statement means that whatever device you have in your hand won't mess with official radio waves (government broadcasts, licensed radio stations, etc.). In spite of that, your electronics hold no guarantee that they won't be adversely affected themselves by those same official radio waves. The device (say, our phones) can receive "interference". Another way of saying that is it's possible for the functionality of the device to be impaired by some external, powerful signal. Interference.
Sound like Will? He can go about his life playing D&D and living in a creepy town, but as soon as he gets too close to a monster or the show's villain, he freaks out and can no longer function. This "interference", while giving him some premonition or vision, significantly impedes his ability to do whatever he was doing at that moment. It's quite dramatic.
And here we arrive at our brains.
Goal-related Interference
Researchers Adam Gazzaley and Larry Rosen, in their book The Distracted Mind, describe at length the concepts around goal-related interference in our lives. They detail two types of interference: Distractions—goal irrelevant information, and Interruptions—goal irrelevant actions.
These two types of interference can come from, appropriately, two difference sources: internal—from our mind, and external—from our environment. That is, you can have internal distractions (irrelevant ideas), external distractions (notifications). Both of these become internal and external interruptions when acted upon.
As Gazzaley and Rosen wrote:
"All complex systems are susceptible to interference, including the functioning of our cars, laptops, 747s, and the Hubble Telescope. The opportunity for interference to degrade any system's performance seems to scale with it's complexity. When it comes to the human brain, undeniably the most complex system in the known universe, it should come as no surprise that it is extremely sensitive to interference at many levels."
Just as a radio antennae can receive interference from a strong, though irrelevant, source of radiation, our complex and intricate minds receive interference from the nearly infinite amounts of goal-irrelevant information ubiquitous in our world. They go on:
"While from some perspectives this may be considered a more enlightened time, our behavior in this domain seems to be completely incongruent with the very nature of our pursuit of our goals—something that is fundamental to our very humanity." (emphasis mine)
One of the amazing gift and abilities of humankind is our ability to plan for and pursue long term goals. Isn't it a bit odd, then, during these incredible, technologically miraculous times, that we are absolutely smothered in distractions and irrelevant, useless information?
As discussed previously, I believe strongly that all this irrelevant, useless information is agency-killing anathema. Gazzaley and Rosen provide us with an effective model for describing and clarifying the sources of these distractions, and how they affect us.
Interference.
We are all painfully aware of how effective notifications and external distractions are at drawing away our attention from our tasks at hand. After all, it isn't uncommon to check our phones more than 200 times a day. But what about the internal distractions? We can't get email notifications to our soul, can we?
Well, not all 200 of those times mindless phone checks were because of a notification.
In The Distracted Mind, the authors outline a fabulous model for why internal distractions (irrelevant thoughts) are generated. It's a great read for a cozy night in. In essence, not only are external notifications a major source of distraction, we also have internal triggers that nudge and encourage us to "change information sources" (i.e. get distracted). These internal triggers are related to the idea of an "attention span", or how long we stay focused on a given source of information.
What attention span?
Over and over again I've heard masses decry a "shortening" of our attention spans due to all the media we consume. While at a high level it makes reasonable sense, the concept of "shortening attention spans" doesn't capture the whole story. Consider someone playing an engaging video game; talk about an attention span. When I was younger you couldn't get me away from Star Wars Battlefront or the latest Super Smash Bros. Those games held my attention for hours. That doesn't exactly sound like the 2 second attention span peddled by fear mongers. Clearly the object of our attention matters.
Think also to scrolling through Instagram, Reddit, or a similar social media site. it isn't uncommon to hop on to the site, intending to kill a couple of minutes, only to realize 45 minutes of scrolling have passed in a moment. That "attention" spent was effortless, frictionless. How can we both be "losing our attention spans" while also accidentally spend an hour on a single task without even realizing it?
The nuance is around boredom.
Obviously there's a difference between scrolling through Reddit and answering emails. Social media sites are designed to be the total opposite of information-related boredom. This is an important point; they aren't designed to be the most stimulating, or the most fulfilling, not by a long shot. If we were "fullfilled" using their site, we wouldn't stay as long. They also aren't designed to hold our attention, that isn't the game they play. They are something weirder. They are "uncanny valley" attention.
Social media sites redraw our attention at clinically derived intervals with information gambling. Every time we scroll to see more we play their game. You see, Instagram has a near infinite pool of decent content that would be exactly what you or anyone else is looking for. Want some new recipe ideas? They have amazing recipes for days. Literally. But they won't, and don't, show them to you, even if that's what you're looking for. Why?
Because this rapid dopamine cycle, which rewards us with information at precisely unpredictable intervals (precise on their end, unpredictable on our end) reduces our tolerance for boredom to a pathological degree. This is how we can spend so much time on video games or media and yet feel like our attention spans are mush. We have extreme boredom atrophy.
As Gazzaley and Rosen propose, "one possibility for why the rate of boredom accumulation has increased... is the influence of pervasive short timescale reward cycles in modern media. From decades of research on learning and behavior, we know that the shorter the time between reinforcements (rewards), the stronger the drive to complete behavior and gain the reward."
This is a major advantage to the social media sites. The constant stream of dopamine associated with their feeds creates an instant internal trigger, or interference, associated with the lack of their feed, which means the lack of constant, novel, intermittent stimulus. Anytime we feel an ounce of boredom we feel anxiety and almost pain because of how weak our "bored" tolerance is.
Boredom becomes pain through atrophy
Gazzaley and Rosen go on.
"In other words, this may all be cyclical: boredom drives frequent switching to new tasks -> rapidly induced rewards -> increased rate of boredom in non-stimulating information sources... And so, the next time we are bored, our past experiences, having gained reinforcement from our smartphone, will drive us to self-interrupt even an important source of information, and even our own quiet time."
Another researcher in the field, John Eastwood, goes into more detail about our current circumstance:
"In today's electronic world, it's rare to be stuck with absolutely nothing to do. Most of us are bombarded by near-constant stimuli such as tweets, texts and a seemingly limitless supply of cat videos right at our fingertips. But all those diversions don't seem to have alleviated society's collective boredom. The reverse may be true. These might distract you in the short run, but I think it makes you more susceptible to boredom in the long run, and less able to find ways to engage yourself."
The result? Anxiety. People who spend more time on their phones have more anxiety, full stop. Greater use of social media increases symptoms of OCD, regardless of original anxiety levels.
Our minds are extraordinarily complex systems, and as such, are subject to interference. Remember this the next time you're in line, waiting to cross the street, or otherwise twiddling your thumbs. That buzzing in the back of your mind, that radio static that says, "check your phone!" That's there on purpose, and you didn't put it there.
Interference. We "must accept any interference received, including interference that may cause undesired operation."
The solution? No 10 step program. No hacks. No supplements. Simply?
Be bored.