Smartphones have eliminated idle time, flooding the brain with constant low-level stimulus.

Evidence

At the same time, I believe that the argument about boredom has to be somewhat nuanced. It is certainly true that one could feel almost nostalgic for Boredom 1.0. The dreary void of Sundays, the night hours after television stopped broadcasting, even the endless dragging minutes waiting in queues or for public transport: for anyone who has a smartphone, this empty time has now been effectively eliminated. In the intensive, 24/7 environment of capitalist cyberspace, the brain is no longer allowed any time to idle; instead, it is inundated with a seamless flow of low-level stimulus. — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1762

Categorization

• XREF: Ties to earlier chapters of Fisher on 24/7 capitalism and attention as a contested resource. — connects to: The smartphone created a new social norm of perpetual device attention. — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 1039
• ADDENDUM: Could enrich both the trees piece (infrastructure that regulates attention) or generally the body of noise-adjacent claims if this were such a chapter — but fits Fisher’s ongoing attentional-politics themes.

Broader Connections

• The smartphone created a new social norm of perpetual device attention. #expands (0.75) — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 1039