“Mommy, I’m so bored!” my 4-year-old daughter yelled to me. “Can I watch TV?” This was the fourth time that day that my daughter complained how bored she was. She’d already colored, painted, rode her ...

For 16-year-old Santiago Gonzalez-Winthrop, there’s more than one kind of boredom. Sometimes, like on his family’s digital “detox days,” boredom feels like a claustrophobic craving for his smartphone.