Perhaps this is due to my insufficient understanding of English, but "an abundance of uninterrupted time spent in relative solitude" doesn't sound like boredom to me, especially if the time is spent on active thinking.
If you are deeply engaged in musing, despite the solitary situation, you are not really bored, are you? At least I wouldn't call it being bored. You've got something to do, and you're well occupied by it. It's just thinking time to me. Such a situation I'd never characterize as boring (unless it lasts a ridiculous time, which reminds me of _Chess Story_).
What I think of as "boredom" is more like being in a sporadic lecture, doing assignments that are lengthy and thoughtless, being locked in a traffic jam, etc. Something that takes time, repulses attention, but has sufficient consequence that compels your concentration. And I don't think those are helpful in the profoundness of anything.
So, if the premise is "social media may prevent users from reaping creative rewards of time to profoundly think", I'd agree. But "profound boredom"? I just couldn't get behind this terminology.
I think it’s an attempt to refer to the mind idling, without active engagement, left to itself to wonder, improvise, manifest spontaneous connections… create.
I find the differentiation to be rather circular in its logic. The authors chose to call it "profound boredom", grouped it with "normal boredom" (which is, in fact, just "boredom"), called the union of them "boredom", and thus boredom can be great for your creativity.
All this mental gymnastic to produce the attention grabbing headline that something bad can be good for you, when that something bad is actually something good, but rehashed into the category of something bad. Of course, that thing which is good for you has not changed; we always knew that if you spend time thinking deeply, you might gain some insights or ideas. It's just a shuffling of terminologies, which conveniently helps market their findings.
By the same thought process, a human being can have 8 limbs, because here are the "normal humans", and there we have Billy the Octopus, who we re-categorize as a "Octopusian human". So, it's safe to say that some human can have 8 limbs.
If you are deeply engaged in musing, despite the solitary situation, you are not really bored, are you? At least I wouldn't call it being bored. You've got something to do, and you're well occupied by it. It's just thinking time to me. Such a situation I'd never characterize as boring (unless it lasts a ridiculous time, which reminds me of _Chess Story_).
What I think of as "boredom" is more like being in a sporadic lecture, doing assignments that are lengthy and thoughtless, being locked in a traffic jam, etc. Something that takes time, repulses attention, but has sufficient consequence that compels your concentration. And I don't think those are helpful in the profoundness of anything.
So, if the premise is "social media may prevent users from reaping creative rewards of time to profoundly think", I'd agree. But "profound boredom"? I just couldn't get behind this terminology.