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The cell phone rings, unread items pile up in the inbox, social media tirelessly pushes to the final device: many people suffer the dissolution of the separation between work and private life and social pressure to communicate, according to the result of a study on “digital stress”.
3,333 people in Austria, Germany and Switzerland were questioned online by the team from the Upper Austrian University of Applied Sciences, the University of Linz and the University of Bonn before the crown crisis. 1,187 participants of working age came from Austria. Overall, Austrians ranked at level three on the seven-part scale on average for the extent of digital stress they experienced. The Swiss (3.21) and Germans (3.11) were just above that, according to the study’s presentation on Tuesday in Vienna.
Crown crisis intensifies
This could be interpreted in such a way that the phenomenon is possibly “not so bad,” according to study co-author Rene Riedl of the Upper Austrian University of Applied Sciences. Here, however, it is “a stress value indicating a real phenomenon”. Furthermore, it can be firmly assumed that the crisis will increase the level of digital stress experienced. In science, for example, the increasing fatigue caused by video conferencing is described as a new aspect, says Riedl.
Two and a half hours a day on the cell phone
Especially since the triumphant advance of the smartphone, it’s important to look at the downsides of digitization, which offers “many potential stressors.” In his book entitled “Digitaler Stress”, the researcher has compiled around 600 international studies of the field. It turns out that there are now around 75 emails per day per user, which takes an average of two hours to process.
The roughly 2.5 hours a day on the cell phone are rarely spent on the phone, indicating a “misery of information and communication” particularly driven by the Internet, according to Riedl. At work, the smartphone interrupts an average of 88 times a day, increasing multitasking makes it increasingly impossible for “flow experiences” to be pleasant at work.
Pressure from new social norms
In the context of the survey, the progressive digitally promoted infiltration of work in the private sphere has proven to be the “most dominant stressor”. It was also often mentioned that new social norms, such as the requirement to respond to emails immediately, create pressure. Excess functionality in applications and the associated lack of usability or unreliability and lack of technical support are also more frequently mentioned as additional stressors. On the other hand, being replaced by a technology at work is at the bottom of the stressors ranking.
For Riedl, the study also shows: “Digital stress leads to emotional exhaustion.” In addition, the increase in work stress and the decrease in job and user satisfaction can be recorded, the effects could be in the direction of “burnout” or depressive symptoms. On the corporate side, digital stress could, among other things, significantly undermine the climate for innovation.
No social media and fixed email times
Countermeasures can be taken, for example, by checking emails only at fixed times and relatively rarely, or by not constantly implementing new technical systems at the company level. It also shows that consciously avoiding social media can lower stress hormones. To better function in the technological jungle, it is also worthwhile “to train in the computer area”, said the researcher.
