My memory of childhood contains very long periods of boredom. I suppose learning to cope with boredom is healthy - both in terms of accepting being bored and finding creative ways to not be bored - and a lack of boredom likely reduces the attention span significantly, but being bored... sucked. Totally sucked. Boredom was torture. And there were limits to the old parental standbys, "read a book" (which I did, often) and "go walk around the block" (it was a boring block).
Being bored as an adult kinda sucks, too. Waiting rooms. Airplanes. Bus rides.
But the phones. The world is in our pocket. Who amongst us can't easily kill 2 hours messing around on those things? Music, video, the intertubes, games, whatever. I used to spring for Amtrak sometimes when I went to NYC and now "eh, whatever, I'll take the bus." 10 bucks or so and 2 hours if traffic behaves. The phone will entertain me. And occasionally I will still read a book.
