Why be bored?

I remember from my own childhood feeling that time went really slowly, and it seemed like an eternity between Christmases and between summer holidays. I remember many occasions when I had no idea what do with my time, and how to deal with being bored. It could be days at a time, that I’d have to figure out what to do. Having had parents that were fairly busy with other things I usually made myself some sort of a project and those were my own, and I learned a lot from them. And still the days were an eternity, and the years were so long they didn’t seem to have any end to them (and of course everyone over 20 was OLD).
I suppose that when we grow up, and get jobs and families, maybe several friends and hobbies, having money to spend and a home to tend to, most people don’t have the time to be bored. Maybe that is just a part of being a grown up? Perhaps we just find ways to avoid being bored all together, I mean… after all it is boring, so why bother?
However, over the last few months I’ve made an interesting observation. Being the mother of 3 children, I’d expect them to be bored once in a while.
I’m sure you’ve guessed that I rarely observe this with them. So I decided to discuss this with them, and not only have they informed me that they feel they’re almost never bored, but what was more strange to me, my 10 year old has commented on several different occasions that she feels the weeks go by so fast, and that a year really seems like a short time.
Why on earth is this? I wonder. I discussed this with a friend of mine the other day, and he told me he remembers his father telling him “you have to learn to be bored”. I remember hearing several grownups say it’s healthy to be bored, because that’s when you get creative. If this is true, are we running out of new ideas, or are they coming from somewhere else than the grate wasteland of Boredom? Maybe they now grow in the Bore domain?
So what do you figure? Why aren’t we bored anymore? Or are you bored, and what do you do about it then? Are we missing out on anything, or have we developed out of it, sort of like what happened with the appendix? I’d love to know.