• by Marissa , December 15, 2010

Today one of my friends posted his Facebook status as “Facebook, you bore me.” My initial thought was, “well then why are you even on Facebook if it’s so boring?”

But then it got me thinking.

All this technology we have available to us is supposed to make our lives easier, right? Information is more easily accessible, we can keep track of everything all in one place, it’s all just so convenient, right? And yet, I think we’re all so much less productive today than people were in the past.

It used to be that if people were bored they might call up a friend to talk. If people were bored maybe they would go to the park or the gym and play a pick-up game of basketball. If people were bored they would try a new recipe to cook for dinner instead of throwing together some spaghetti. All of these things were fun things to do and were more like leisure activities, but people were actually being pretty productive by doing these things.

Now, when people are bored they get on Facebook, play video games or watch TV. This isn’t really accomplishing anything. Now we have to schedule in time to talk to our friends. We consider going to the gym to stay healthy a time consuming chore. We don’t want to take the time to play a couple basketball games once a week, so instead we spend half an hour on the treadmill and it just becomes another item on our to-do list. The idea of trying a new recipe is a daunting task that is saved for the rare Sunday that we might not have a lot to do, and we eat TV dinners while we sit alone and look through Facebook pictures of people we haven’t actually spoken to in years.

It used to be people were so busy doing their day-to-day tasks that they didn’t have much time to be bored. Now we’re so bored by our day-to-day tasks that we spend too much time on Facebook and end up not having enough time to complete our day-to-day tasks.