Why the Do Nothing Challenge Doesn’t Do Much for You

They sit alone in a room, expressionless, doing absolutely nothing, giant timers clocking down the hours and minutes. No books, no devices, no food, no distractions, no sleep. It’s a challenge some Gen-Zers are setting for themselves on TikTok—the “Do Nothing” challenge. The idea is to deliberately court boredom to restore depleted attention spans, a salve for the frantic overstimulation of our distracted age. Some of these videos accumulate millions of views.