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Maybe I am making the answer a lot more complicated than needed, but the truth is that, to me, "shallowness" will have different connotations, depending not just on the type or context of the person one is talking about, but also on the *source* of the info.

When I get the info that someone is "shallow", I will read different things into it depending on "how" and by whom the person is judged.

Over time, I have seen people of all types, people that go from what *I* consider very "deep" and interesting to very shallow, call *other people* "shallow". It has become clear to me, in the past, that when *x* person tells me something about *y* person, it might mean something very different than if *y* spoke of *z*.
Not sure if I am being clear!

An example would be the following... shallow means superficial, but in what ways a person is superficial, or to what point, that really is defined by he/she whom is judging the person. And so I must look at the source of the info to get an idea of what this person might mean.
I have friends for whom shallow equals being interested only in things linked to passing, fleety pleasures or banal things such as looks, belongings (materialist people), gossip, etc.

For others, shallow means that the person they are talking about has few interests, hobbies or things one could talk about, whether the person focuses on looks and "things" or not.
Some people are shallow not that much in the sense of caring for the superficial aspect of things as they are in the sense of not having much substance.
You know, people who are like "lemmings" or "robots", who basically do not think twice of what they do or why or how. They do what they are told to do, what they are supposed to do and never do any soul searching nor are aware and/or interested in learning about the meaning of things, the motivations of people or, as someone else said, do not partifcularly care for having or analyzing their own' or other people's beliefs, morals, goals, attitudes, outlooks on lives. They see other people for what they look like, for what they obviously do (their jobs and occupations) and for little more.

For other people I know, like some I know are always seeking to grow and become better people, learn new things, see beyond the obvious, their saying someone is "shallow" indicates me that the person is not interesting, that it is someone living in a bubble and not caring much for seeing what is there to see and learn beyond that bubble. In that bubble everything can be about looks, or about things, or about one specific activity, job, hobby, etc. It's more their attitude than what makes part of that bubble what they are warning me about. I associate, then, "shallow" with indifference toward others, or selfishness, or ... with people just plain boring .

Summing things up, I always associate shallow with someone not being particularly interesting and/or with limited interests, bu then, what more I can read into that or how seriously I can take those words will depend on how shallow or not I think myself the "teller" is like and/or what is shallow in his/her world.

Just for the record, it has already happened to me that people that *I* consider shallow and narrow-minded have spoken of someone else as "shallow" only because they thought that person's values or beliefs were silly and that the person did not fit in with their own world. Ironically, sometimes I knew already these people they spoke of and I disagreed: I thought myself that these people they called shallow were actually, simply, shy or absent-minded or "apparently in the clouds" only because they would not "fit in" and get interested by the conversation and world of the shallow people! In other words, when some people in particular tell me that someone else is shallow, I might even have to take it as a possible indicator that the person is anything but that!

Has this ever happened to you? ... this clashing of definitions and concepts making you read totally different things in the same word depending on who used it?