It’s 10:00 p.m. You’ve already showered and eaten. You have prepared food and clothes for the next day and you are about to go to bed. What do you do before turning off the nightstand light? Until a few years ago, many of us spent a few minutes reading a book before falling into the hands of Morpheus, but more and more we check our mobile phones to gossip about our friends’ social networks and, worst of all, look at the mail from work. Are you one of those people who cannot live without your mobile, tablet or computer? Maybe you don’t know it, but you suffer from technostress, the obsession of being constantly connected and aware of new technologies.
What is technostress?
Techno-stress is nothing more than a type of stress in which people need to keep an eye on their cell phones and work emails all the time, something that can affect physical health and have negative psychological consequences. Among the different types of techno-stress, three should be noted:
Techno-anxiety. Fear of using certain computer programs.
Techfatigue. Tiredness and mental exhaustion after spending hours and hours in front of the computer and using the internet.
Techno addiction. This kind of techno-stress is the least known, but the one that is causing the most problems in today’s society. Techno addiction is technological dependence, to such an extent that it influences people’s day-to-day lives and their behavior, conditioning their lives completely.
Differences between stress and technostress
Techno-stress is a derivation of lifelong stress, but with shared symptoms and other more specific ones caused by this addiction and obsession with seeing work emails. Among the common psychological symptoms, insecurity, fear, difficulty concreting and verbal expression, and hyperactivity stand out. Physiologically, the effects they share are excessive fatigue, tremors, tingling, nausea, vomiting, or diarrhea, as well as dry mouth, profuse sweating, or dizziness.
But techno-stress has some peculiarities, or rather, some specific negative consequences for a person’s health, such as technological dependency, social isolation, window syndrome (simultaneously open multitasking), difficulty concentrating and retaining concepts, and over-identification with people. Technologies.
Do you feel identified with some of the effects described above? If so, perhaps, from now on, you will begin to control the use you make of technologies within your working day and outside of them, and you will avoid being constantly aware of whether an email enters your email inbox from work or if someone has given you a like on one of your Instagram posts.
