A recent study carried out by Yu-Kung Lee and his colleagues, written in the journal of Behaviour & Information Technology, analysed the concept of technostress and its related factors. The study focused in the relationship among the level of stress experienced, four key personality traits and the kind of phones used by subjects.

The four traits analysed can be resumed as: • Locus of Control • Social Interaction Anxiety • Need for touch • Materialism

Locus of Control Locus of control is defined by the authors of the study as “the extent to which people believe that their actions determine their rewards in life”. Smartphones overcame the traditional barriers of classic phones, allowing multitasking actions and unlimited checking at every time of the day, destroying the classic lines between work and home. The consequence is a constant waste of energy and attention, which brings to a significant amount of “technostress”. The authors resume the concept explaining: “This has been called the ‘helpful-stressful cycle’, in which one purchases a smartphone to help manage the workload only to have it induce stress and become the bane of one’s existence”.

Social Interaction Anxiety Social Interaction Anxiety (SIA) consists in the anxiety derived by the social interaction, especially in forms of face-to-face contacts. People affected by SIA tend to prefer indirect ways of communications, such as virtual interactions and use of social networks. An increased use of online social platform corresponds to higher amount of smartphone checking and eventual Internet addiction, which causes a significant amount of technostress for the users.

Need For Touch Need for touch is a trait common to some people that need to constantly have contacts with their hands. Many of those individuals succeed in satisfying their needs with the constant contact with their devices touch screens. This problem seems not to exist in users of traditional phones. The need of touching a smartphone in any moment ends up becoming an addiction and, therefore, becomes increases the amount of technostress caused by the electronic device to the users.

Materialism Materialism is the last trait analysed by the researchers. This last aspect appears to be the only one that causes more technostress for traditional phones’ users than smartphones’ owners. The researchers believe that owning an innovative smartphone lowers the need for materialism in the users, which are satisfied with their product and, therefore, experience lower levels of technostress.

Conclusions The study succeeds in demonstrating that personal features and traits influence the amount of technostress suffered by the users of electronic devices. The discovery may be useful for health professionals, that could use the new information to identify and cure patience who experienced the technostress phenomenon. The authors also suggest to all the users, especially those who recognise technostress as a problem, to reduce the mobile usage in order to avoid situations of stress caused by the technology.

Written by: Pietro Paolo Frigenti