Every time my daughter uses this phrase, many ideas and thoughts come to my mind, especially memories from when I was her age, at that time I often tell her some of my anecdotes or some story.
This usually happens immediately after access to mobile devices is restricted, it is as if for a period of time their minds finish receiving that dose of dopamine and they despair at first, it seems that they do not have the ability to think about anything other than what they were doing seconds before with the mobile device.
This usually happens to them when they are in a kind of trance or hypnosis, extremely concentrated on what they are doing or are simply watching something that entertains them. When I was her age, I did not have mobile devices with which to entertain myself for a long time at a time and I reacted the same way, when as a child I would say "I'm bored" it was because I had really exhausted all the resources I had.
But was there something that anesthetized me like this generation is anesthetized by the use of mobile devices? Clearly yes, those were different times, but they were different entertainments, they were other things that generated that dopamine that would make our brain rest in entertainment and pleasure without taking into account time. In my case, for a moment it was video games, hello game consoles. At that time I had a console called "Family Game" later I had "SEGA". I remember that when I connected to the games I would spend a day or a whole night and I wouldn't realize it, when I got home from school it was the only thing I wanted to do "Play with the console".
Although I played with friends, on the street or at the "Pool" on the corner, there came a time of fights, disagreements or some could not continue playing, it was not like in the games where I thought I had control but in reality the control was in my mind, I fervently desired the short-term reward without physical effort.
Now that I'm a father, I understand all this much better. There are times when I want my daughters to learn what it has taken me a lifetime to learn, but what can I do as a father? In my case, what works for me when my daughter says "I'm bored" is to tell her or talk to her: "It's good that you're bored because from that moment on you force your mind to be creative, you force it to get out of that comfort or vice of constant dopamine supply. It's good to be bored. But the most important thing is that when she tells me that, I start asking her questions and we talk, and they always have topics of conversation, topics that don't make sense to me, topics that we like or many others that we can share.
If my daughter tells me: I'm bored, it's a good time to connect, because if we don't do something, we get bored together... Hehehehe. What do you do?
