The Notion Of Technostress In Modern Society

The tremendous advancement in technology has enabled us to collaborate and share information between people separated by border, language and ethnicity. In the process of doing so we have come a long way. Today everything is just a touch away from us. But at the same time, the availability has come with a steep price - it has become a major factor in inducing stress known as technostress.

“Technostress refers to stress that results from both the use of information and communication technologies and the pervasiveness and expectations of ICT use in society in general. ” Technostress is the negative impact of technology in human psychology.

With the world advancing in the field of information technology, any information we desire is made available to us effortlessly via internet. Various websites and apps focus on this. But with increasing use of internet, comes its own disadvantages. Overexposure of content can be harmful to human mind. Technostress is becoming more obvious as it is manifesting itself physically. But it is a topic rarely discussed. Technostress induces anxiety in such a way that we suffer from it unknowingly. Many of us feel the urge to know what is happening around us and in the world even if it does not impact us in any way. This compulsive behaviour brings technostress. An extensive research done in Jaume I University reveals that “technostress experiences are characterized not only by technostrain but also by an excessive and compulsive use of ICT. ” Craig Brod states that technostress is “a modern disease of adaptation caused by an inability to cope with the new computer technologies in a healthy manner. ” We have created something and overexploited it even before knowing how to control it. Technostress is what occurs when demand for content exceeds the human capacity.

Technostress induces various symptoms, one of which is anxiety. Anxiety of different forms brings different effects like irritability, headaches, backaches, eye strain, neck pain, stiff shoulder, joint pains, mental fatigue, depression, nightmares, panic, resistance, and a feeling of helplessness. Many people who are suffering from anxiety induced by technostress constantly feel low without no specific reason. These symptoms are very much seen in today’s youth. Use of social media has become an addiction. Social media apps like snapchat, instagram, and many more are designed specifically so as to constantly provide feeds and update of their contacts. This makes the users hooked in their phones and laptop cutting them off from the real world and human interaction. This symptom has not just inflicted the youth population, but virtually all the demographics have been diagnosed with the illness. As real time progress of work can be updated constantly so many working people focus on providing and receiving work related information and the centre of their life becomes totally absorbed in technology. We can see that many people take pictures just to post on the social media and not to experience the fun of it. This develops an uneasy feeling when the person is cut off from the use of technology. Being totally absorbed in social media has a direct psychological impact. The impacts of technostress is not only in individual level but seen globally in various organizations and even countries. Cyberwarfare is a real world threat that has the potential to destroy organizations and bring out war among countries. Tension is being built up among countries and people are taking advantages of it. Recently 58 of our government websites were hacked. All of this is due to the tension created in the global scale by technology. If we go in the direction in which we are heading now it will not be long when the world ends in the battle of the technology. There’s outburst of tremendous amount of suppressed feeling and thoughts in an unhealthy way due to it. If technostress wins over mankind then the creative human mind becomes slave of what we created ourselves. It would destroy us from inside-out. The devastating impacts will be felt internally by almost everyone and soon the modern society would fall down to its knees.

So it is up to us to prevent the wildfire of technostress to spread rapidly. The first step, and the most important one, is awareness. Not much people are aware about it and are consumed by tech unknowingly. We must become responsible and courageous enough to educate the people around us about technostress and its impact. It might be hard for many people to admit that they might be suffering from technostress.

Some might even find it funny to thinking that technology can negatively influence their lives. Researchers have proven time and again that it can influence the brightest minds. People needs to take a closer look at it and accept it as a fact that this can impact any person, and take some measures to remedy the situation. We should take control of tech before it takes total control over us.