Why You're Bored of the Internet: 10 Things To Try Instead (Handpicked for Burnout)

Introduction

Browsing the internet can be a great source of entertainment and can even open you up to a whole new world of enlightenment and education.

However, there is a dark side to the internet that hardly ever gets talked about, and that is that it can lead to burnout or boredom in more ways than one.

It can also be easy to become conditioned into negative habitual practices that are only amplified by using the internet, especially when communities rally around and make you feel part of something.

With that said, we want to focus on why you can become bored of internet services and bored of browsing the internet and hopefully, allow you to form a healthier bond with such a powerful tool.

Why You’re Bored of the Internet

Boredom is often a result of a shift in our perspective or how we see things that we interact with.

Most commonly, boredom is the result of becoming overexposed to something whereby we find it hard to feel the same positivity about it as we once did.

Typically, this type of boredom is more common in things that are easy to become addicted to from the outset — they make you feel great and get you hooked, but they deliver too much hype and not enough substance.

This isn’t really a problem in the technology of the internet itself (or how it’s made), it’s more a problem in that the internet allows us to develop things without careful measure that can quickly become publicized to the masses; or in short, the human condition.

Basically, it’s easy to rally around something and become part of a community, even if it’s not for (morally) the right reasons.

This kind of unchecked hype can often lead to the development of systems that gamify our emotional responses into an addictive habitual process.

Case in point: algorithms that are designed to learn from what you are most likely to click on or watch, even if they aren’t particularly fulfilling from a spiritual or emotional point of view.

Basically, you’re just a dollar count to most services developed on the internet, not a thinking, feeling human.

These types of services such as social media, YouTube, and addictive games are designed to keep us going back for more, even when it isn’t doing us any good.

This leads to an internal emotional conflict between your conscious and subconscious mind; the primal part of yourself will keep doing things over and over even if they lead to burnout, mainly because you’re trying to get the same feeling that you did when you first started doing it.

Consciously, you should (and probably do) know better, but the emotive and feeling part of the brain doesn’t know right from wrong, it just knows what it once had, and that is a powerful influencer of what decisions you go on to make.

Overcoming boredom is a case of building up other, healthier habits that take your attention away from things that have left you feeling drained.

Thankfully, we’ve got a selection of handpicked activities you can try that are great for developing a healthier relationship with your spare time.

10 Things You Can Do Instead of Browsing the Internet (A Few Solutions for Internet Burnout)

1. Photography

The great thing about photography as an activity is that it combines both practicality and the ability to show off your creativity.

It doesn’t particularly involve any type of athletic skill which means that it’s more a case of time, rather than genetics or disposition that will influence your success with it.

If you like browsing videos or pictures on the internet, whether it be through YouTube or social media, then there’s a good chance you’ll enjoy taking your own even more.

Boredom is a symptom of idle hands and not challenging yourself enough – photography can be a great way to overcome this and can lead to a lifelong passion that allows you to offer a unique take on how you see the world.

2. Reading

If you’re bored of reading through comments and statuses every day on social media, then why not try reading a book instead?

The internet can be a really boring place, mainly because people have become conditioned into thinking and speaking a certain way and thus, much of what you see becomes regurgitated and unsubstantial.

With books, you have access to a completely different and unique take on how another person sees or has seen the world, whether it be from our own era, or from a thousand years ago.

Much of the information produced in a book is a condensed version of someone’s life or expertise in a variety of different areas.

However, fiction books can also offer a break from the usual tedium of a somewhat doctored reality that people like to spout off over the internet — The Hobbit/Lord of the Rings series is a great place to start!

3. Play/learn an instrument

The internet can be a wonderful tool for learning but can also be a real timesink whereby you accomplish not much and are often left feeling burned out by the end of your online session.

For those who feel like they have or want a greater purpose, learning how to play an instrument can be a great way to fulfill that feeling.

Developing ourselves spiritually and emotionally, and becoming more whole, is the best way to lead a continuously satisfactory life.

In fact, rather counterintuitively, the internet can be used as a conduit for learning everything you need to know about instrument playing through useful mediums like YouTube or Google.

Basically, your instrument playing, whether it be playing guitar or learning the drums, is just a simple search away from being a reality in your life.

4. Team Sports

Playing team sports is about as opposite to browsing the internet as we could come up with — it’s a heavily physical practice (in most cases) and relies on working as a team with your fellow men and women.

Team sports such as football and/or hockey are an opportunity to bond with people in person whereby you can make real friendships that last a lifetime.

In fact, a level of trust is incorporated into your team, mainly because you’ll have to rely on them to help you win against the opposing team.

Again, this is something that the internet does not incentivize; anonymity rules and relationships only last as often as they’re necessary.

We dare say that superficial interactions like this on the internet can also be another source of boredom, they don’t really give you anything real or tangible that can easily be brought into day-to-day life.

As a caveat, we’re not saying there aren’t outlier scenarios; some online communities meet up regularly but this is because there is usually a strong foothold rooted in reality rather than purely being an online presence.

To underscore this, team sports helps us build important skills such as communication, trust, and kinship among our fellow teammates that will ultimately leave you feeling happier and more satisfied.

5. Martial Arts

Martial arts are very similar in practice to the previous point on our list in that it requires you to build trust and relationships with other people.

In fact, we dare say that martial arts can give you a truer understanding of other people and their intentions.

Browsing the internet is a convenient way to live your life where you can always feel safe, however, this often leads to frustration and boredom; humans need to be challenging themselves to feel like they’re growing, both spiritually and emotionally.

Plus, martial arts are a great way to stay healthy from a physical point of view and they’ll also teach you how to defend yourself which is a win-win scenario in our opinion.

If you’re not sure where to start then why not have a read of our most fun martial arts list?

6. Painting

Painting is a rather unique hobby in that it allows us to express ourselves in pretty much any way we like, whether that be through literal paintings, or perhaps, more complex abstract works of art, there’s no end to the type of creativity you can incorporate.

In fact, that’s why the term “blank canvas” has been coined as a description of a scenario whereby we can do or achieve anything we want without judgment or prewritten rules.

Painting is the perfect conduit for someone wanting to share how they see the world and to almost show how they feel about what they see around them.

7. Gardening

Sometimes all you need on a sunny day is to turn off your phone or computer and go outside to experience the joys of nature all around us.

One way you can perpetuate this feeling is by starting a garden of your own where you’ll be able to grow plants, flowers, fruits, and even vegetables that can be enjoyed throughout the year.

You needn’t start big either – start with a small patch of earth to work with and grow over time from there as you become more experienced with how to take care of everything.

Plus, the great thing about gardening is that it is a very forgiving process that operates over weeks and months, rather than minutes or hours.

This gives you the time to assimilate your understanding of things every day as you continue to learn; you’ll be able to piecemeal everything together and eventually it’ll become a giant puzzle that you know intricately.

8. Traveling/Sight-Seeing

Similar to our previous point on this list, going outside can be the perfect way to escape your boredom with the internet.

Some things simply can’t be replicated over the internet, or soon to be released metaverse.

Biologically speaking, we aren’t that different from how we were thousands of years ago and that means emotionally too.

Sometimes we need to see and hear tangible things rooted in reality for us to feel more satisfied inside.

For that reason, traveling is one of our favorite pastimes on this list to get you to forget your internet woes, and out into the real world where you can enjoy real experiences with real people.

It doesn’t even have to be too far from where you currently reside, heck, even a drive ten miles down the road for a day out is better than nothing.

Go travel, see the world, and make memories with those you care about!

9. Hang out with friends

Leaving a legacy behind is hard to do if you never interact with your friends or family.

The internet has a habit of forgetting who you are in no time flat but your friends will always be there for you.

Honestly, if you’re bored of the internet, meeting up with friends is one of the best cure-alls for basically any kind of emotional woes including your own current dissatisfaction with day-to-day internet browsing.

Even if you don’t have a plan, the simple act of meeting up with your friends and sharing some banter is likely to brighten up your day in a relatively short time and might even lead to you forming healthier habits rooted in reality.

10. Educate yourself

One of the most common reasons for boredom is that you aren’t doing enough to grow as a person.

The internet has a way of creating backseat passengers of things going on around them but not prompting them enough to go out and do things themselves.

One of the best ways to free yourself from the chains of complacency is by educating yourself on whatever topic you feel like.

Whether that be marine biology, textiles, or even how to build rockets, learning deeply personal interests will allow you to evolve into a person of action, rather than a person who lives their life through the lens of others.

Just think about it, you now have access to nearly all the knowledge of human existence and can start learning it almost immediately — that is a truly powerful revelation and a much better way to use the internet rather than mindlessly scrolling through social media feeds.

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