In the history of the human race, boredom is practically brand new—less than three hundred years old.
The English word does not appear until the 1850s, and its parent word bore (as a noun—”he is such a bore”) appears only a century earlier. The French word ennui begins to mean what we call “boredom” around the same time. Before the eighteenth century, there simply wasn’t a common word for that feeling of frustration and lassitude that overtakes so many of us so often…
Could it be that modern life is boring in a way that pre-modern life was not? How could this be? Our world has more distractions and entertainments than we can ever consume. We feel busy and overworked in ways even our grandparents couldn’t have imagined (even as many of us work far less hard, physically than most of them did).
But that’s actually why we get bored. Boredom—for children and for adults—is a perfectly modern condition. The technology that promises to release us from boredom is actually making it worse—making us more prone to seek empty distractions than we have ever been. In fact, I’ve come to the conclusion that the more you entertain children, the more bored they will get. . .
Boredom is actually a crucial warning sign–as important in its own way as physical pain. It’s a sign that our capacity for wonder and delight, contemplation and attention, real play and fruitful work, has been dangerously depleted.
–Andy Crouch, The Tech-Wise Family
according to Script 