The teens are bored because 1) they are misusing the technology/resource that is the internet and 2) they never learned how to entertain themselves, probably because of the internet.

I'm a Millennial and had several friends complain regularly in high school and college that they were bored. They couldn't stand to be alone because they didn't know what to do with themselves. I never understood this. I was fine in groups and could be social and I was perfectly fine being alone for extended periods of time. I genuinely can't think of a time when I was bored when I was left alone. Sure, I've been bored in my life - but it has been when I was forced to do something or be somewhere I didn't want to be. Alone and in charge of my own time, though, there was always something I wanted to do, learn, etc. I think people like some of my friends and apparently Gen Z never learned to be alone or how to get lost in their own mind, whether that be through creativity or curiosity.

I've also noticed another troubling trend with Gen Z. Many of them have no passion, drive, or ambition. They don't really care about much of anything and simply want to be entertained all the time. I think that's the other side of this. I have younger siblings as part of this generation and nieces and nephews and they all seem to be aimless in life. Granted, they are still young and may not know for sure what they want to do, but for all but one of them they seem to have no interests or hobbies!

This wording might make me sound old and cranky but...when I was their age I was not like that. This isn't some romanticized hindsight bias from my childhood. I remember clearly. I had several interests that I was really, really into - science/math, computers/programming, tennis, and science fiction. I was fortunate enough to have parents who could afford to send me to places like tennis camp in the summer as well as computer camp (yes, that actually existed back in the 90's, believe it or not) so that I could further these areas of interest. My pure entertainment was through movies, music, and yes, gaming. But gaming wasn't done out of boredom. It was done for one of two reasons. First was the social aspect of multiplayer games like Counter-Strike and Goldeneye (which at the time had to have everyone in the same place). The second was for the fantasy aspect of gaming so that I could allow myself to get wrapped up into a well-told first person story with games like Myst, Half-Life, and System Shock.

Lastly, what truly astounds me is Gen Z's lack of curiosity. When Google and Wikipedia came around, I entered a whole new level of learning online. I could find and learn anything I wanted to, without having to hike to the library and try to figure out where to find the information I wanted (which I never did, because I hated going to the library). The internet became a massive educational resource to me. But Gen Z doesn't even use it for this purpose, as far as I can tell.

I don't think, as the article suggests, that the cause is that we have adapted. Instead, I think society has changed in a few other ways where instead of trying to curate children's curiosity and imagination, we have instead decided to follow stricter structures and schedules in a one-size-fits-all attempt at schooling, while decreasing funding for the arts and entirely getting rid of things like shop class. Combined with these structural changes, children have tablets from shortly after birth and they learn that entertainment (a.k.a. the eradication of boredom) is just a click away...until it suddenly isn't. And then when that hits, they don't know what to do, because they have never been in that situation ever before. Their mind literally can't function in the same way because it was never taught how to handle that scenario. So they click around through apps like zombies, accomplishing nothing, learning nothing, and remaining unfulfilled.