The age in which we live, this non-stop distraction, is making it more impossible for the young generation to... — Vivienne Westwood

The age in which we live, this non-stop distraction, is making it more impossible for the young generation to ever have the curiosity or discipline... because you need to be alone to find out anything.

Author: Vivienne Westwood

Insight: There's something quietly radical about sitting with boredom. Not the doom-scrolling kind, but the real, uncomfortable kind where there's nothing to do and nowhere to go. That's when actual thinking happens—when your mind gets bored enough to wander into genuine curiosity about something that matters to you. The problem now is that we've engineered boredom almost entirely out of existence. There's always a notification, always a next thing, always someone else's thought ready to occupy your attention before you can even form your own. What's tricky is that this constant input feels productive. You're learning, right? Seeing new ideas, staying informed? But there's a difference between consuming information and discovering what you actually care about. That discovery requires friction—sitting with a half-formed question, letting your mind get frustrated enough to push deeper. It requires being genuinely alone with your own thoughts, not alone while scrolling. The irony is that young people today have more access to knowledge than any generation in history, yet many report feeling less capable of deep focus or forming their own opinions. The discipline Westwood mentions isn't about willpower or old-fashioned rigor. It's about protecting space for your own mind to work, before the world tells you what to think about.