They touch on something later in the article that sounds perfectly familiar to me from my teen years: eventually that unavoidable and universal boredom can lead to creativity.

Just as people my age saw TV go from 13 channels to 150+ channels and wondered how you could ever run out of things to entertain yourself, today's teens run into the same limited ability of "consumption" to keep their minds stimulated.

Eventually there's nothing on that you feel like watching, your mobile media feed runs out of new posts, and you get tired of playing the same video games. That period of boredom can be just what you need for ideas to start percolating in your head and occasionally lead you to make something or do something different.

Boredom is what got me screwing around with simple programming on my old Commodore computer or figuring out how to use a mix of cables, adapters, and stereo inputs on my boombox to experiment with rudimentary multi-track recording.

To this day I love having a good supply of parts, bits, pieces, craft supplies, and yes--boredom available on occasion because that's when I try out new ideas. When the alternative is just sitting around doing the same old things, the barriers to trying new ones tend to drop.