Were We Always This Restless?

Sometimes I would just pick up my phone and just pause there for a second, not even sure what I was about to do. A message maybe. An email. Or nothing at all. It’s funny right - how the hand already knows where to go before the mind even catches up. There’s always something waiting - something to read, reply to, watch, fix, or think about. And I can’t help but wonder: did all this make us restless, or did our restlessness just finally find a place to land?

The Things Asking for Our Attention

It’s quite easy to blame the phone. It’s right there in our hands most of the time.

A notification pops up. Someone texted. An email came in. A headline looks urgent. Then another video, another post, another opinion, another thing we didn’t ask for but somehow we end up seeing anyway.

But honestly, it’s not just the phone.

There are meetings, deadlines & even chores that quietly pile up. A course we started with excitement and forgot about. A book sitting half-read. A show we keep meaning to start. A meal to cook. Sleep we keep postponing.

And then there are people.

A partner we haven’t really talked to in a while. Parents we should probably call more often. Friends we keep saying “let’s catch up soon” & eventually to children who need us fully present. Messages we read but don’t reply to.

And then there’s us.

Our own health. Our thoughts. Our worries. That one conversation we keep replaying. That thing we forgot. That thing we want but can’t quite name.

Even when nothing is asking for us, the mind still finds something to hold onto.

So maybe it’s not fair to make technology the villain here.

It feels too simple.

Was Life Always This Full?

People were restless long before smartphones showed up.

They got bored too.

They worried about money, love, the future, and what other people thought of them. They wanted more. They felt impatient. They had responsibilities that couldn't simply be put on hold.

A long journey indeed felt long.

Waiting for a letter actually meant waiting.

A quiet afternoon didn’t have to be used for anything.

But life wasn’t empty either.

People worked. They cared for families. They dealt with uncertainty, illness, loneliness, conflict, and ordinary responsibilities. They found ways to pass the time. They told stories. They played games. They visited each other. They read newspapers. They walked. They sat outside.

And perhaps sometimes they were simply bored.

That part matters.

Because it would be too easy to just kinda look backwards and imagine that people once knew how to be content while we somehow forgot.

I don't think we can really know that.

Maybe humans have always had an uneasy relationship with empty space.

Maybe we have always looked for something to fill it.

The Strange Comfort of an Empty Moment

There used to be boredom you couldn’t escape quite so easily.

Waiting for someone who’s late.

Sitting on a bus with nothing to do.

Standing in a queue, just standing.

Finishing work and having nothing immediately next.

In those moments, the mind had quite a bit of room to wander.

You might look out the window. Notice the sky. Watch people pass by. Think about something random from years ago. Make up stories. Talk to the person sitting beside you.

Or do absolutely nothing in particular.

Not every moment had to become something useful right!.

A walk was just a walk.

A meal was just a meal.

A conversation could stretch without anyone checking a notification.

Reading could mean getting lost in one book for an afternoon.

There were also ordinary things that took time: cooking, making something by hand, travelling, writing a letter, waiting for someone to arrive.

I don’t think that means life was better back then. That would be too nostalgic, and probably not true.

Life was harder in many ways. Slower, quick to agree but also heavier, more uncertain, and more limited.

Still, there were moments when nothing rushed in to replace the silence.

When Every Pause Has an Exit

Now, even small pauses feel different.

Waiting for a friend? | Sitting in a cafe? | On a bus? | In bed, unable to sleep?

For all these moments - Maybe we just normally scroll.

Sometimes we don’t even feel bored first. The hand just reaches for the phone.

And the strange thing is, it works.

The discomfort disappears. The waiting disappears. The silence disappears.

But so does the moment.

There is some evidence for the feeling behind this. A 2026 study examining smartphone-style social-media notifications found that notifications temporarily slowed participants’ cognitive processing, with the effect influenced by how relevant the notification felt and by people's habitual interaction with their phones.

It’s a small finding in a much larger conversation, but it gives a name to something familiar: sometimes the interruption happens before we have even decided whether we want to be interrupted.

And that makes me wonder again.

Did technology create our restlessness, or did it just make escaping it easier?

Maybe we were always restless.

We just had to sit with it more often.

The World Has Become Very Good at Feeding Us

Bored? ~ There’s something to watch.

Lonely? ~ Someone is online.

Curious? ~ There are endless answers.

Anxious? ~ Plenty of opinions.

Can’t sleep? ~ There is always something else to scroll through.

Don’t know what to buy? ~ There are recommendations.

Don’t know what to do? ~ There is something waiting.

None of this is inherently bad. A lot of it is genuinely helpful. Technology connects us, informs us, entertains us, and saves us time.

But there’s something worth noticing in how smooth it all is.

We no longer have to sit with every little moment of boredom, uncertainty, or waiting.

Research on boredom and digital media does show a relationship between boredom and digital-media use, although the research is not simple enough to say that one straightforwardly causes the other. A 2023 systematic review and meta-analysis found a positive association between boredom and digital-media use, with a stronger association for problematic use, while also noting that much of the existing research is correlational.

That distinction matters.

Maybe our devices don't simply cause boredom.

Maybe sometimes we use them because we are bored.

And perhaps sometimes the constant switching makes it harder to become absorbed in anything else.

Either way, the relationship seems more complicated than “phones are bad.”

Maybe restlessness isn’t new. Maybe what’s new is how quickly we can feed it.

What Do We Actually Want?

We’ve always wanted more.

More love. More success. More comfort. More certainty. More recognition. More everything.

That part hasn’t changed.

So it feels unfair to blame technology for desire itself. Desire is much older than all of this.

What is interesting is what happens when wanting has very little friction between the feeling and the response.

We want to know something, so we search.

We want to see someone, so we open an app.

We want something to watch, so there are thousands of options.

We want something to buy, and something is recommended before we have even finished deciding what we want.

Ancient philosophers were already thinking about a version of this problem.

Epicurus, for example, distinguished between different kinds of desire including desires he considered natural and necessary, natural but unnecessary, and empty or groundless. His concern wasn't that wanting itself was wrong. He was interested in which desires actually contributed to a good life and which could keep people chasing things that never quite satisfied them.

That feels surprisingly familiar.

Not because Epicurus was somehow writing about smartphones.

He wasn't.

But because the question is older than the technology:

Do we need everything we find ourselves wanting?

There is a difference between wanting something and needing it.

Between enjoying something and depending on it.

Between being curious and needing an answer immediately.

Between choosing to look and feeling unable to stop.

Maybe that question is enough.

Maybe the Restlessness Is Inside Us Too

Here’s the uncomfortable part.

Maybe the phone isn’t creating all this restlessness.

Maybe it’s just giving it a place to go.

Because even without it, we’d still have thoughts that don't settle. Worries about the future. Memories that replay themselves. Comparisons we don't mean to make. Desires that don't switch off. Boredom that shows up anyway.

Silence doesn’t automatically feel peaceful.

Sometimes it just feels loud in a different way.

And that matters.

Because maybe the goal was never to become someone who is never restless.

Maybe that was never realistic in the first place.

What Does It Mean to Sit With a Feeling?

Imagine a long bus ride with no phone.

At first, it would feel strange. Almost uncomfortable.

You look out the window. Adjust your seat. Check the time even though it won’t change anything.

You think about reaching for your phone & then remember there’s nothing there.

So you just sit.

Slowly, the mind starts doing what it always does.

It wanders.

A memory shows up. Then another thought. You notice a shop outside. A face. A piece of sky. A random feeling you can’t quite explain.

Maybe you get bored again.

Maybe you don’t.

Nothing dramatic happens.

And maybe that’s the point.

There is no guarantee that sitting quietly will produce some profound insight. Sometimes you will simply be bored.

But perhaps that is something we have become less familiar with: allowing a feeling to be there without immediately deciding what to do with it.

Stillness was never necessarily about having a perfectly quiet mind.

Maybe it was just about staying long enough to notice what the mind was doing.

The Space Between Things

Modern life has given us a lot.

We can talk to someone across the world instantly. Find answers in seconds. Watch almost anything, anytime. Order food, book rides, learn skills, read the news, stay connected & all without waiting very long for any of it.

That is real progress.

That is real convenience.

But convenience has a quieter side.

It can shrink waiting.

And waiting is as annoying as it can be used to create space.

Space to think.

Space to drift.

Space to be bored without fixing it.

Space for conversations to stretch.

Space for nothing to happen.

We don't need to romanticize that space.

We just need to notice that it matters when it disappears.

Were We Always This Restless?

I don’t think we were necessarily more or less restless before technology.

We were probably restless in different ways.

A farmer, a student, a parent, a traveller, a writer, a child all could have worries, desires, boredom, impatience, and unfinished thoughts.

Human nature hasn’t changed as quickly as our tools have.

What has changed is the environment around that nature.

Now, restlessness rarely has to sit alone.

We can distract it.

We can feed it.

We can answer it.

We can escape it.

And sometimes that’s fine. We all do it.

The interesting part is how quickly we do it, sometimes before we even notice that we are uncomfortable.

Maybe the point isn’t to eliminate restlessness.

Maybe it’s just to recognize it when it shows up.

To sit with a few empty minutes without rushing to fill them.

To let a thought pass without chasing it.

To be a little bored without immediately treating it like a problem.

And maybe, in one of those ordinary moments, we might notice something simple.

Stillness may not be the absence of restlessness.

Maybe it is simply the space to notice it.