Gen Z is ‘raw dogging’ boredom by literally doing nothing

Some members of Gen Z are raising eyebrows online after sharing the method they use to avoid endlessly ‘doomscrolling’ through their social media feeds.

In the modern age, true-blue boredom is somewhat hard to come by. If you’ve got nothing to do, there’s a million distractions right at your fingertips thanks to your smartphone.

From TikTok to Instagram, Netflix and HBO, there’s endless ways to keep boredom at bay… but some Gen Zers are choosing to embrace being totally and completely bored.

Gen Z is ‘fixing’ their attention spans by embracing boredom

The trend first kicked off in early October, but it’s making another comeback in November as more Gen Zers share how they are diving head-first into doing literally nothing.

These 13 – 28-year-olds are putting down their phones, tablets, and turning off their TVs to sit in complete silence with zero distractions, leaving them totally alone with their thoughts.

The fad has been humorously labeled as ‘raw-dogging’ boredom, although older users are clocking it as simply being quiet in their own heads.

Many Gen Zers using this method are doing so to help ‘fix’ their attention spans, which they argue have been considerably damaged by consuming short-form content like TikToks and Reels.

Perhaps the most prominent proponent of this method is a TikToker named Rowan, who undertook a challenge to sit without any distractions for one hour a day for thirty days.

By the end of his self-imposed challenge, Rowan said he felt an “unreal sense of achievement,” saying the project “pushed me to take a baby step toward becoming a better person, being more productive, and making the most out of my life.”

However, not everyone is on board with this method. There are plenty of detractors and critics in the comments sections of these videos online who are skeptical that simply spending one hour a day doing nothing will magically “fix” your fried attention span.

“One of the defining features of Gen Z is taking something everybody knows about and pretending they invented it by giving it a different name,” one commenter wrote on X.

“Rebranding meditation is wild,” another remarked.

Scientific studies have found a negative correlation between teens’ test scores and social media usage, with one finding that the average person’s attention span shrunk from 75 seconds to 47 seconds within the last half-decade or so.