Slashdot Mirror
Correlation Between Stress and Technology?
marshman113 asks: "I'm an undergraduate Cognitive Science major at a famous public university and currently enrolled in a Stress and Disease course. Being somewhat of a techie myself, I've decided to write my term paper on the relationship between technology and stress. I'm sure all of you hard-working Slashdot readers experience a fair amount of stress, on a daily basis. Has the evolution of technology in the workplace (computer, internet, email, etc...), which is suppose to make your job easier, made it any less stressful? If so, how? If not, why?"
Stress has existed down the ages! Just because a study shows an association between technology and stress this does not mean much. Any decent statistics student will tell you that CORRELATION DOES NOT IMPLY CAUSATION. This is a simple fact, and one that is often overlooked.
tim
Other people cause stress. So the mail server goes down, big deal. Unless people, like your boss, get all worked up over it.
Stress is a function of living beings, not machines.
KFG
At the risk of oversimplifying, the one constant that I see affecting stress in my job and those around me is expectation.
As technology improves, the expectations placed are higher. Even if the facilities aren't there to achieve them, I'm being asked more seemingly insurmountable tasks.
Then again, being asked to "secure" a network....*grumbles*.
*unplugs internet connection*
+++
NO CARRIER
You cannot rightfully make a broad, sweeping generalization about stress and computers because of the limitless range of their uses and functions. For most Slashdotters and geeks, computers are a hobby and a way to relieve stress. For secretaries, journalists and others who depend on computers solely for work, computers can be a source of horrible stress.
Many people play games on their computer to relieve stress. Others find new stress by trying to get their computer adjusted so that it can play games.
Computers have introduced a new kind of tool to the human race; one that can be used for a broader range of applications (in the old sense) than anything that came before them. Computers do not cause stress; people cause stress for themselves or allow outside forces to enhance or reduce their stress. To blame a machine as a source of stress is as stupid as blaming your dinner for a lack of taste.
-JemTechnology encourages stress: Sitting on the office chair in the cubicle in front of a monitor is not the best way to let those muscles relax and blood flow through your body. Unfortunately, if I am in the middle of working on some problem or complex stuff, I am too involved to stand up and take a walk or something.
Technology relieves stress: During natural breaks through my workday it's easier for me now to go to TheOnion, Google News or Slashdot and just take a mental break. Instant messaging is yet another distraction that can be bothersome sometimes, but generally allows you to communicate with a bunch of people you know and feel like you're in the middle of a friendly conversation.
Before email was widespread outside the academia, most of the interaction with your customers would be by phone, which if you're a developer can be a PITA, cause when the phone rings you have to stop whatever you're doing to take care of that immediately.
Nowadays I found myself dealing w/ customers thorough mostly email and (sometimes) IM, and it is so much easier to ignore it while on a coding rage and say deal with it once every hour. Customers still get a quick feedback and I can organize myself better.
I have been recently promoted. And I am now doing less technical stuff and more organizational stuff :) Guess what? Technical stuff is much less stressful... You are just doing your stuff and that is it.
I had someone pass me a copy of a magazine article once that described how much computer support (tech, web, etc) staff actually dislike taking vacation.
Why? because it's one of the few jobs where the work stacks up so much, that 5 minutes after you get back from vacation - regardless of how relaxing or fun it was - you're right back to the same (or greater) level of frustration and work stress that you had before you left....
After having been in the computer tech and internet world (support, as well as development), I can honestly say that I agree with this - especially for tech staff that are in smaller companies or offices where there isn't anyone to really cover your work while you're gone....
Worrying works!! 99% of all the stuff I worry about never happens
Technology has the potential to modify our expectations in almost every area of our lives. It changes our thoughts about safety. It changes our relationship to time. It changes how we expect others to communicate (whether we communicate that way or not - we are frequently hypocrites) What's more significant, is that it does not do this to us alone, it does it to everyone around us as well, so that our employer expects different things, our spouses, our schools, etc. Many times, the expectations that change are not reasonable at all.
Case in point:
I remember when I was growing up (12-16 years ago), my family lived in a very rural area. On Saturdays my mother would go into town for groceries and general shopping. She would be gone for about 3 hours. Occasionally, depending on how many places she went, how much she bought, if she went all the way into a town with a mall, she would be gone for 5 to 6 hours. She often forgot to tell my father she would be gone that long. On times like that, when she was gone for more than four hours, my father and I would step outside to look for her (this was irrational, as we could see about half a mile down the road, nevertheless we did it) and comment about how long she had been gone. We would look out the window more and more frequently as she was gone longer and longer. I know my father worried, but there wasn't much you could do short of getting in the truck and driving toward town. There were no cell phones (or if there were, we did not have one, and there were no cell towers around our house)
Flash-forward to today and you see a very different response to these "where are they?" situations. I've seen people dial someone's cell phone number over and over for hours trying to get hold of them. I've pretty much done the same thing myself, when I've been worried about my wife. When you do finally get hold of them, you are emotionally drained, relieved, and a little bit angry.
"Are you, OK!!!?" you demand of them.
"I had the cell phone turned off," they say, or, "It was in my purse and I didn't hear it ring." They even seem a bit puzzled by your concern. In your mind, they were stranded somewhere, or kidnapped, or worse.
My point (and I'm sorry for the long ramble) is that technology isn't exactly the culprit here, it's the way we let it change what we expect. The ability to reach out and touch someone no matter where they are makes us fear the worse when it ceases to be possible.
I think there are plenty of other similar relationships between technology and expectation, but I'll let someone else look at them, my lunch break is almost over.
--
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Managing people is stressful because - at worst - you're being bitched at by both your bosses and your subordinates the whom you're supposed to care about as a "good manager".
The owls are not what they seem
Often I'll look up from one of my screens and realize that my entire body is tense and I haven't taken a full breath in what must be a couple of hours. Between sitting at a computer all day, listening to the radio in my car, and turning the t.v. on at home, I can often spend an entire day under technology's spell. Every now and then I'll come up out of the technotrance and just sit or putter around for a couple of hours with all of the post-lightbulb inventions switched off and feel myself returning to the real world.
It seems I must unplug myself for at least a few hours a day to recharge.
As far as IT is concerned, it is *not* stressful.
Nobody dies when you foul something up. It doesn't affect a whole lot, maybe some company's profit margin, or delivery of some merchandise.
Try being an airplane mechaninc, where you are held criminally liable for every corpse related to something that breaks if you've signed off on it.
Maybe a fire fighter, where when you don't do your job correctly people die.
Policeman, when you fail to do your job, you die, innocent people die...
Compared to these, IT is a cakewalk.
And yeah, I know that IT has a strong influence in many of these fields, but it is abstracted from the first-hand death inherent in each.
Sounds like you have stress due to a shitty job, not due to technology.
I have three computers here, a couple projects, customer calls and am in charge of network security. Yet I don't have any stress. I have priorities, and I follow them. I too sometimes work overtime, but on my own terms...if I can't work overtime, I just say I can't. Obviously if there's so much work that they need you to stay late to do it, they need you, period.
A lot of stress is caused by poor coping skills. You can say "no," you know. In fact, in my experience the ability to say "no" is important. All my managers have had that skill, and that's how they got their jobs. People respect a helpful worker, but they hate a "yes" man. Just be sure to say "yes" enough to make yourself useful, and there will suddenly be less to bitch about.
Hey freaks: now you're ju
Because, in a serendipitous coincidence, on slashdot's front page, you'll find and article titled Timeshifting: Cram More into Life.
If you read the description on the front page, you'll find a person who's seeking to use technology to its fullest to push out all the "dead space" in his life.
Eventually, there's nothing that technology can't provide. That is, the only thing technology can't provide is nothing.
I'd argue that, on occasion, people need a little nothing -- quiet, distractionless, reflecting time that you could call 'down' time -- and we're getting less and less of it.
In fact, we are so used to getting no down time that we don't even know what we're missing. All this distraction is like a diet of fast food: tastes good at the time, but nutritionally deficient, if not outright destructive.
But maybe I'm just old fashioned.
"It's an erotic, spectacular scene that captures the thrusting, violent, vibrant world Bohemian spirit..."
Assuming you were driving and your cell phone came on and you were suddenly drawn into a conference call, your lack of attention to driving (and possible slowing down to avoid an accident as attention is divided) your apparent change of attitude in driving is observed by other drivers. The change lanes to get around you, or sit there and put up with it (possibly stewing over the situation) other drivers shift to accomodate, and so on. Perhaps time at work, to keep your job, places stress upon the family and how they interact with others. And so on.
It does seem that KISS has been thrown out the window, to make life easier for someone, somewhere, but a lot of people are being put upon to make that happen. Maybe someone is suffering because they've slaved away under stress to give you the tools and devices you depend upon. Is more actually getting done, or is technology simply a circular treadmill with several people on it at once?
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
So your stress level has gone up because the company you work for has decided to lower the stress level of their customers, who wanted GUIs with on-screen help, intuitive interfaces, and the like. So the company has decided that the people who pay them should have less stress, while the people who they pay can handle a little more.
Sorry, but it seems pretty reasonable to me.
- The Amazina Llama
For instance, you assume that everyone who ownas a computer is completely capable of using it. This really isn't the case. I know relatives who are completely literate, good people who use clippy to quick search help things. (1/4 times, it ends in a phone call to me seeing if I can help.) But, just because YOU are insulted by Clippy doesn't mean he doesn't help thousands of other people (and save me dozens of questions from my non-computer savvy uncle and grandparents). It says nothing of their intelligence, just their familiarity with computers.