Looking forward to the weekend so that you can turn your smartphone off? If you answered “yes” to this question, then you might be suffering from social media “technostress”.
Technostress is defined as a type of stress that we experience through our use of information systems. This type of stress is really dangerous, as it can suck you into a never ending loop.
You’d think an obvious response to this problem would be to stop using our devices or deleting the apps. But we have recently published research showing that, when faced with this pressure, many of us end up digging deeper and using our phones more frequently, often compulsively or even addictively.
When we are faced with a stressful social situation, such as an argument with a person — we cope by distancing ourselves from that situation. However, when these situations come up from our use of social media, it seems that people adapt one from two very different coping strategies.
We surveyed 444 Facebook users from Germany three times over a year to find out how they responded to social media technostress. Sometimes, as we might have expected, they diverted or distracted themselves with unrelated activities such as hobbies. But counter-intuitively, we found it was more common for people to distract themselves by using social media even more.
Find out more about the study over at The Conversation.
Image Credit: mohamed_hassan/ Pixabay
By Franzified
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