There have been several posts on HN about this. I have commented every time I have seen one because I think the above quote is true. I also think it is one, of several, reasons things are going the way they are.
Many of my friends, coworkers, and relatives have fallen into the trap of being bored to death. They fill up their time with worthless empty "calories" of media consumption, ethanol, and doom scrolling. Almost all of them are unhappy. I think it is widespread to be like this.
But the problem is solvable.
There is no person, no person too busy, too tired, too poor, too disabled, too shy, too anything, who cannot find the time to do something that provides value to their life. They just have to, and this is the part that makes people mad, put down their phone and turn off the TV.
In every zip code in the entire United States of America, there is some group of people, somewhere, that is looking for someone to join them-- unless it is an isolated patch of remote wilderness where food and fuel need to be airlifted in or a remote island separated from the mainland by thousands of miles of sea there IS something.
You just have to get out, find them, and join them.
The last time something like this popped up I do what I usually do and listed non-work, non-social media things to do within an hour of my deceased grandparents' farm in central Southern Indiana. That's my benchmark-- if there are things to do here there are things to do everywhere because it is about as far from "the big city" you can get absent stretches of western desert or alaskan tundra.
Some quick searches found rod and gun clubs, knitting circles, small rural libraries with 3d printers going idle and anime clubs, three (yes, three) astronomy clubs, amateur radio clubs, gardening clubs, volunteer fire companies (who always, everywhere, need members), civic societies, book clubs, and even a small community performing arts center with a banging schedule of shows whose website was practically begging for people to come join them to be stage crew, performers, and set builders. Rural, barely-covered-by-a-cell-signal, southern Indiana, and those are just the things I found with online calendars full of events.
Being active in one's community outside of work, and deriving meaning not from work but your personal accomplishments and activities is a skill-- but it is a learnable skill.
https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Abundance/Ezra-Klein/...