I was struck by a campaign launched by the Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles through yapaka.be under the slogan “Laissons une petite place à l’ennui” (“Let’s leave a little space for boredom”). With a modest communication effort — at least two television spots aired before the evening news on RTBF’s La Une, along with a dedicated section on the organisation’s website — the campaign managed to convey a powerful message with remarkable clarity.
Today, children’s schedules are often overloaded with schoolwork and extracurricular activities. This, however, is little more than a reflection of the broader consumer society in which we live. Children are constantly surrounded by stimuli, particularly those linked to the audiovisual, digital and online worlds. What is supposedly meant to benefit them — access to leisure, sports and organised activities — often ends up generating unnecessary stress.
More worrying still, many children struggle to cope with boredom. They show a growing lack of imagination, difficulty playing on their own, an inability to make choices when faced with multiple options and, over time, even problems sharing with others.
It therefore came as little surprise to read about a study conducted in Canada in the 1980’s comparing children from three different municipalities: one with access to four television channels, one with a single channel and one with no television at all.
Researchers observed children’s behaviour when television was first introduced in these communities and returned two years later. Children from the municipality without television initially showed the strongest results in divergent thinking — a key indicator of imagination and creativity. Two years after television was introduced, however, their results had fallen to the same level as those of children in the other communities. I am not aware of any comparable study examining the impact of the emergence of the internet.
Television, it seemed, dampened children’s imagination — a faculty that is essential to development. Imagination not only enriches personal experience but also plays a crucial role in fostering emotions and attitudes such as empathy. This is why an increasing number of psychologists and child development experts argue that boredom and frustration are formative experiences, in the broadest sense of the term.
Boredom is not only formative; it also offers benefits that are not immediately apparent, especially from a parental perspective. To begin with, boredom stimulates creativity. It is, in effect, a plunge into imagination. When children have nothing to do, they are compelled to invent games, create stories and explore ideas on their own.
Boredom also encourages autonomy. A child who learns to make choices and manage time independently develops self-confidence, which in turn allows parents to place greater trust in them. Through boredom, children come to realise that they are capable of taking initiative — a form of autonomy that is deeply valuable.
In addition, boredom helps children learn to manage and appreciate moments of solitude. While parents rarely leave young children alone, as they grow older it becomes important for them to experience the pleasure of being with themselves and taking time for reflection — something that formal education rarely teaches. In this sense, boredom and solitude also allow individuals to discover their genuine interests and passions, by confronting absence rather than constant stimulation.
Treating boredom as something purely negative does not only stifle children’s creative spirit; it also ignores a deeper need to disconnect from a world of constant demands — both physical and digital — and to reclaim the time and mental space required to encounter oneself.