Boredom was one of the most commonly reported psychological experiences of the COVID-19 pandemic, affecting a majority of people under lockdown and rippling outward into mental health, eating habits, rule-breaking, consumer spending, and even how people perceived the passage of time. Surveys found that roughly two-thirds or more of respondents reported feeling bored during lockdowns, and the consequences went well beyond simply having nothing to do. What made pandemic boredom so psychologically potent was the combination of enforced monotony, social isolation, and an indefinite timeline, a cocktail that turned an ordinary emotional signal into a persistent stressor with real public health implications.
How Widespread Was Pandemic Boredom
Boredom during COVID-19 was not a fringe complaint. In one survey of 260 respondents conducted during lockdown, about 68% reported feeling bored.1Archives of Health Science. Boredom and Psychological Problems during a COVID-19 Lockdown A larger population-based study in Ghana tracked changes in well-being before and during the pandemic and found that boredom symptoms rose substantially from a pre-pandemic baseline of about 30%.2PubMed Central. Prevalence and changes in boredom, anxiety and well-being among Ghanaians during the COVID-19 pandemic: a population-based study Anxiety went up too, and overall well-being scores dropped. That pattern showed up across countries and cultures, making boredom one of the pandemic’s most universal psychological byproducts.
What made COVID-19 boredom different from the everyday variety was its inescapability. Normally, if you are bored at work, you can go home. If you are bored at home, you can go out. Lockdowns removed those exits. The activities that typically relieve boredom, socializing, traveling, dining out, attending events, were precisely the things that public health measures restricted. That left people in a kind of psychological trap where the emotion designed to push them toward new stimulation had nowhere to push them.
Who Was Most Susceptible
Not everyone experienced pandemic boredom equally. The lockdown survey that found 68% boredom rates also identified several demographic patterns: boredom occurred more frequently among men, among people with less formal education, among those not working from home during lockdown, and among those who lacked a daily routine.3Archives of Health Science. Boredom and Psychological Problems during a COVID-19 Lockdown That last factor, having no routine, turned out to be a consistent predictor across multiple studies. People whose day-to-day structure collapsed entirely under lockdown were sitting ducks for chronic boredom.
Personality mattered too, and probably more than demographics in the long run. Researchers studying “boredom proneness,” the stable trait-level tendency to experience boredom frequently and intensely, found it was a powerful predictor of how someone fared during the pandemic. People high in boredom proneness were not just more bored; they were more likely to break COVID-19 rules, less likely to wash their hands, and more likely to believe that COVID-19 was a hoax.4PubMed Central. Boredom in the COVID-19 pandemic: Trait boredom proneness, the desire to act, and rule-breaking The correlation between boredom proneness and rule-breaking was strong, and it held up even after controlling for other personality traits. In other words, this was not simply a proxy for being generally impulsive or disagreeable. Something about boredom itself seemed to erode compliance.
When Boredom Undermined Public Health Measures
The relationship between boredom and breaking pandemic rules deserves its own attention because it had direct consequences for disease transmission. In the early months of the pandemic, researchers found that boredom-prone individuals were significantly more likely to violate social distancing guidelines, skip handwashing, and disregard mask requirements.5PubMed Central. Boredom in the COVID-19 pandemic: Trait boredom proneness, the desire to act, and rule-breaking The troubling part was that this was not just a first-wave phenomenon. A follow-up study conducted a full year into the pandemic found the same pattern persisting: boredom-prone people remained more likely to break COVID-19 rules, suggesting this was a stable, ongoing problem rather than an early-lockdown blip.6PubMed Central. Boredom Proneness and Rule-Breaking: A Persistent Relation One Year into the COVID-19 Pandemic
This makes psychological sense. Boredom is fundamentally an action signal, an unpleasant feeling that motivates you to change what you are doing. When the recommended action is to keep doing nothing, that signal does not quietly go away. It intensifies. Eventually, for people whose boredom tolerance is low, the discomfort of doing nothing outweighs the perceived risk of doing something forbidden. This helps explain why compliance messaging that focused solely on fear of the virus missed a big piece of the puzzle. For some people, the fear of endless monotony was the more pressing threat.
How Time Warped Under Lockdown
One of the stranger effects of pandemic boredom was its impact on time perception. Shortly after Germany’s first lockdown began in March 2020, researchers found that people reported a markedly slower passage of time and increased boredom compared to their pre-pandemic experience.7Scientific Reports. Adapting to the pandemic: longitudinal effects of social restrictions on time perception and boredom during the Covid-19 pandemic in Germany Days felt longer even though weeks and months seemed to blur together, a paradox that many people struggled to articulate but almost everyone recognized.
This distortion was not unique to Germany. Cross-national research found that time dilation was a widespread experience: people across multiple countries consistently reported that time felt slower than before the pandemic and that the distance to the pandemic’s beginning seemed longer than it actually was. The effect persisted not just for weeks but across years of the crisis. Psychologists link this to a lack of novel experience. Your brain uses distinct events and transitions to mark the passage of time. When every day looks the same, there are fewer markers, so retrospective time collapses even as present-moment time drags. Boredom amplifies both halves of this paradox, making the current moment feel interminable while making the past feel formless and unreachable.
The Path from Boredom to Depression
Pandemic boredom was not just unpleasant in its own right; it served as a bridge between loneliness and more severe mental health problems. Research on college students during COVID-19 found that loneliness did not always lead directly to depression. Instead, it often worked through a chain: loneliness increased boredom, boredom fueled repetitive negative thinking (the kind of stuck, ruminative thought loops where you rehash the same worries), and that rumination drove depression.8PubMed Central. Loneliness and Depression in College Students During the COVID-19 Pandemic: the Role of Boredom and Repetitive Negative Thinking Each step in the chain was statistically significant, and boredom worked both as a standalone pathway to depression and as an entry point into rumination.
This matters because it reframes boredom from a trivial complaint into a clinically relevant warning sign. If you were lonely during the pandemic and also chronically bored, you were at meaningfully higher risk of developing depressive symptoms. And the mechanism was not mysterious: with nothing to occupy your attention, your mind defaulted to chewing on whatever was worrying you. The pandemic supplied no shortage of material, health fears, financial stress, grief, uncertainty about the future. Boredom cleared the mental stage for those worries to run on a loop.
Boredom and Eating Behavior
If you found yourself standing in front of the refrigerator more often during lockdown, you were not alone. Research consistently linked pandemic boredom to changes in eating patterns. A study that specifically tracked boredom-related eating found that people who reported increased boredom during the pandemic snacked more frequently and scored lower on measures of intuitive eating, the ability to eat based on internal hunger cues rather than external triggers.9PubMed. Differing Experiences of Boredom During the Pandemic and Associations With Dietary Behaviors Interestingly, overall diet quality did not differ dramatically across groups. The main shift was in snacking frequency and in the disconnect between hunger and eating.
A broader look at lockdown eating confirmed that the picture was mixed. Increases in high-energy-density snack foods during lockdown were associated with emotional eating tendencies and COVID-specific health anxiety. But the same study found that some people moved in the opposite direction, eating more home-prepared foods and more fruits and vegetables, driven by adaptive coping strategies.10PubMed Central. Eating in the lockdown during the Covid 19 pandemic; self-reported changes in eating behaviour, and associations with BMI, eating style, coping and health anxiety The dividing line was not boredom alone but what people did with it. Those who channeled restless energy into cooking often improved their diets. Those who ate reactively, reaching for snacks to fill the void, did not.
How Boredom Changed Spending and Consumption
Pandemic boredom also left a visible mark on consumer behavior. A study of over 1,400 people in China found that the perceived severity of COVID-19 increased people’s willingness to spend after the pandemic ended, and boredom was a key mediator of that relationship. People who felt more restricted and more bored during lockdowns developed a stronger desire for novel, stimulating experiences, which translated into plans for pent-up consumption once restrictions lifted.11PubMed Central. Perceived Severity of COVID-19 and Post-pandemic Consumption Willingness: The Roles of Boredom and Sensation-Seeking This helps explain the “revenge spending” phenomenon that many economies saw as lockdowns eased.
During the pandemic itself, boredom also reshaped how people shopped in real time. Research on live-stream commerce found that consumers’ feelings of loneliness and boredom directly influenced their purchase intentions during live shopping events. Boredom drove people toward the sense of presence and connection that live-stream shopping provided, essentially using the parasocial interaction with influencers as a substitute for the social stimulation they were missing.12PubMed Central. The Impact of Consumers’ Loneliness and Boredom on Purchase Intention in Live Commerce During COVID-19: Telepresence as a Mediator The rise of live-stream shopping during 2020 and 2021 was not just a technological trend; it was partly a boredom-relief strategy with a credit card attached.
Young People and the Search for Meaning
Pandemic boredom hit younger people in particular ways. Children and adolescents experienced mental health consequences linked to the loss of social activities, imposed public health measures, the transition to online learning, and strained family relationships. For many young people, school was not just an academic setting but the primary source of social structure, physical activity, and routine. When it disappeared, the resulting vacuum was especially fertile ground for boredom.
For older adolescents and young adults, the stakes went beyond mere restlessness. Research on late adolescents during COVID-19 found a significant negative correlation between boredom and meaning in life: the more bored they felt, the less meaning they perceived in their lives.13Advances in Social Science, Education and Humanities Research. Correlation between Boredom and Meaning of Life in Late Adolescence during the Covid-19 Pandemic This is a developmental concern because late adolescence is when people are actively constructing a sense of identity and purpose. Extended boredom during this critical window did not just waste time; it interfered with the process of figuring out what your life is about. Young adults who had recently begun college, started first jobs, or moved away from home for the first time were suddenly stripped of the novelty and independence that make those milestones meaningful.
Creativity as a Protective Factor
Not all responses to pandemic boredom were harmful. One of the more encouraging findings was that everyday creative pursuits seemed to buffer against the worst psychological effects. Research on creativity and well-being during the pandemic found that people who increased their engagement with creative activities, things like making greeting cards, writing, crafting, or picking up a new hobby, reported higher self-esteem, more optimism, and more positive emotions. Those who decreased creative engagement, by contrast, had higher levels of depression, anxiety, boredom proneness, and negative affect.14PubMed Central. Creativity, Boredom Proneness and Well-Being in the Pandemic
The key word there is “everyday” creativity. This was not about producing great art or starting a business. The protective effect came from mundane, accessible activities, the kind of thing you might dismiss as trivial but that actually engages your attention and gives you a sense of agency. Sourdough starters, paint-by-numbers kits, backyard garden projects: these became pandemic clichés for a reason. They worked. They gave bored people something to care about in a world where most of their usual sources of meaning and stimulation had been shut off. The finding also reinforces that boredom is not primarily about having nothing to do. People who were bored during the pandemic usually had access to television, social media, and the internet. What they lacked was the sense that their actions mattered, and creative projects, even small ones, restored some of that feeling.
Telework and the Boredom Paradox
Working from home during the pandemic created a paradox around boredom. On one hand, remote workers who maintained professional routines were partly shielded from the worst of lockdown boredom because they still had structure and purpose in their days. On the other hand, the blurring of work and home life introduced its own form of monotony. Research on telework and well-being during COVID-19 found that increased job control, one benefit of working from home, helped reduce job boredom and burnout while boosting work engagement.15SpringerLink / Current Psychology. Why increase in telework may have affected employee well-being during the COVID-19 pandemic? The role of work and non-work life domains But that benefit was contingent on actually having more control over your schedule, something that not all remote workers experienced equally.
People in jobs that were already monotonous found that removing the social interactions of an office made the monotony worse. Commuting, grabbing coffee, chatting with colleagues in the hallway: these were not “productive” activities, but they punctuated the day with micro-novelties that kept boredom at bay. Without them, work became a featureless block of screen time in the same room where you also ate, relaxed, and slept. The workers who benefited most from remote arrangements tended to be those whose jobs already involved variety and autonomy. For everyone else, the pandemic merely relocated their boredom from one building to another.
What Happens in the Bored Brain
The neuroscience of boredom helps explain why it was such a potent force during the pandemic. Animal research has identified the insular cortex, a brain region involved in monitoring internal states, as closely linked to boredom-like behavior. Activity in the insular cortex correlates with the production of boredom-like responses, and boredom-like behavior is preceded by a brief release of dopamine in the ventral lateral striatum.16PubMed Central. The meaning of boredom That dopamine blip is thought to function as a kind of internal alert: your brain is signaling that the current situation is not rewarding enough and you should go find something that is.
In a normal environment, this system works well. You feel restless, you change your activity, the boredom resolves. During a pandemic lockdown, the signal kept firing but the behavioral options to resolve it were severely limited. Your brain kept telling you to seek novelty, and the world kept telling you to stay on the couch. That mismatch between the internal drive and the external constraints is likely why pandemic boredom felt qualitatively different from ordinary boredom. It was not that people had nothing to do in the absolute sense; it was that the things available to them failed to satisfy the neurological demand for stimulation and meaning. Evolutionary theorists have even proposed that boredom proneness may be linked to faster “life history strategies,” where individuals in unpredictable or harsh environments are driven to seek novel stimuli more aggressively.17PubMed Central. Pace of Life Is Faster for a Bored Person: Exploring the Relationship Between Trait Boredom and Fast Life History Strategy If that framework is right, the people most tormented by pandemic boredom may have been wired for environments where restlessness pays off, not for environments where sitting still is the safest option.
Doomscrolling and Digital Escape
For many people, the primary response to pandemic boredom was picking up a phone. The term “doomscrolling,” compulsively consuming negative news and social media feeds, entered common usage during 2020, and boredom was a central driver. With few real-world outlets for stimulation, smartphones became the default boredom-relief tool. Research on smartphone use during the pandemic found that people’s relationships with their devices shifted substantially, with users spending more time on screens and experiencing more conflicted feelings about that use. The scrolling provided just enough novelty, a new headline, a new post, a new video, to temporarily quiet the boredom signal. But because social media is designed for shallow engagement, the relief never lasted, creating a cycle where more scrolling led to more dissatisfaction led to more scrolling.
The irony is that the digital behavior many people turned to for boredom relief may have deepened the very conditions that made boredom worse. Passive consumption of social media has been linked in pre-pandemic research to increased loneliness and decreased well-being. During the pandemic, that dynamic was amplified: the content people were consuming was disproportionately alarming (pandemic death counts, political turmoil, economic collapse), and the medium itself reinforced the sense of being a passive observer rather than an active participant in life. Compare that with the creativity findings, where active, effortful engagement with small projects improved well-being. The difference was not really about screens versus no screens. It was about whether bored people responded to the internal signal by doing something meaningful or by numbing it with low-effort stimulation that left the underlying need unmet.