Lifestyle
Technology and Stress – The Good, Bad & Ugly
Technology has become an integral part of our everyday
lives. Especially now that wireless Internet is so prevalent in phones and
laptops, we’re often expected to answer e-mails within minutes of getting them,
we’re criticized when we don’t respond to Facebook wall posts within a 24-hour
time span, and leaving our mobile phones at
home for the day is an activity of the past.
A recent
article featured in The New York Times sparked discussion of how technology
has changed our lives (and even our brain capabilities) in some ways for the
better and in some ways for the worse. In the following weeks, this blog will
feature a group of brilliant minds with diverse backgrounds in the social
sciences (psychology, communications, anthropology and sociology). They’ll be
discussing the different approaches and
thinking on the topic of technology and stress.
This is a topic that we Intel folk are very interested in.
We understand how stressful technology can be, at times. We know the feeling of
wanting to rip your hair out because you’re sick of waiting for your e-mail to
load, your computer to unfreeze, or your document to appear.
Research shows that each person spends an average of three
days every year just waiting for technology. This time spent waiting can cause
excessive stress, which Intel has coined “Hourglass
Syndrome.” The name comes from the tiny hourglass you see on your screen
when your computer is taking its sweet time to do something. We thought it was
an appropriate metaphor. Trust us when we say that we’ve been there, and we’re
sick of waiting too.
Like I said, Intel understands how stressful technology CAN
be. So we’ve been determined to design products that improve the quality of
your life and lower your stress levels, as opposed to increasing them. How did
we do this? It involves a team of social scientists to study
how people actually use technology.
Although technology can create stress, using the right
technology in the right context can actually help alleviate stress. The
scientists here at Intel can show us how to do that.
Below is an introduction to the social scientists who will share their research with us and a preview of what to expect in each of their upcoming blog posts here on the Inside Scoop. Be sure to check back and join the conversation.
Does technology help you manage stress or add to it?
Margaret (Margie) Morris is a clinical psychologist and health technology researcher at Intel. Margie creates technologies that address well being from a psychological perspective. She works on a wide array of emerging technologies that improve our well being. For example: using tiny sensors that monitor the well being of the elderly to allow them to live independently, Facebook applications for behavior change and mobile phone applications that bring psychotherapy into everyday life.
Margie will examine our innate need for connectivity and how technology helps us fulfill that need. Beyond that, connections inform our identities, our sense of what’s possible, and as a result, our resilience from stress. She’ll discuss her studies of mobile therapies to elaborate on this.
Ken Anderson, a symbolic anthropologist, has been a leader in innovative research of people and their practices and turning those insights into corporate strategy. He is currently working on Intel’s strategy for the coming ten years.
In Ken’s blog post, he will take an anthropological perspective on how people use technology to maximize their free time. He will talk about the “pacifier practice,” where he likens people and technology to a baby and its pacifier. When we get nervous, technology is there for us. When we get bored, technology is at our side. When we need to make contact with friends, technology is our tool. He’ll touch on the creative ways people have integrated technology into their lives.
Kathi Kitner
Kathi Kitner is a cultural anthropologist. She recently completed research on the interplay between class, consumption, shifting world economies and technology adoption in the project Consumerization.
In Kathi’s blog post, she will discuss the correlation between social media – from early e-mail to Facebook – and stress reduction. In particular, how this affects women. She will incorporate her research from her Chilean fieldwork and other anthropological studies around the globe.
Genevieve runs a lab that will reinvent how we all experience computing over the next decade. She leads an R&D team of social scientists, interaction designers, human factors engineers and a range of technology researchers who are challenged with working out what we love about the technologies we already have in our lives, and what we will love in the future. Genevieve has a background in cultural anthropology and a PhD from Stanford University.
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Disclosure – I work for Intel….From my personal point of view, though, I see both sides of the debate. On one hand – having technology around me all the time can be overwhelming. On the other hand – it also makes my life much more convenient. Overall, I think the progression of technology has been a really good thing, and it continues to be. Think of all the medical advancements technology has helped us make over even the last ten years. Think of all the things we can do now, that we couldn’t do without such advanced technology. True, technology can be a little stressful sometimes. But being able to call someone on your cell phone when you’re lost to get directions, e-mail someone to tell them you’re running late, and look something up instantly when you have a question helps to make life much easier than before technology made these things possible. I’m excited to see what amazing things are available to us in the future, technology-wise. And I KNOW that Intel will be truly essential in helping to make these amazing things possible.
Sarah Helfgott
You know those reverse gear sensors on cars that go beep beep as you’re getting closer to an obstacle while backing up? One day, a friend’s sensor was having a no-beep day, and he promptly backed his car into a wall.
My car doesn’t have those devices and I’m thinking its not a good idea to let anyone else drive it.
Technology can be very easy to use, but once it makes us lose our senses, I think the stress will follow closely behind.
This is not a cut and dry answer question. There is obviously grey matter. If taken into consideration that back during the first stages of evolution where people had to worry about the essentials for living(food/shelter/water/interaction.) They had relatively few concerns. They had to satisfy their needs and not get eaten or attacked by other animals. Moving ahead to the development of settlements, we now see a need for organization therefore someone had to be “in charge” of everything thus creating the first man made stress outside of the necessities of living.
To fray from sounding like a broken record we can move on to today. Because of technology people have become stressed out and fearful of what it does and can do to them(The movie Office Space shoots to mind). For example we now have to preform at a certain level and everything has to be done now and everyone needs to know about it. And this is why we have the smartphone era. I like being able to do everything from my phone. YES. It definitely makes things easier and I think because of the developments in mobile computing, office networks run off of home computers and cloud computing we are now allowed a freedom from technology by technology. So I feel like there is a little hill that we have been climbing and things got increasingly difficult until now. But maybe we found the top and it will only get easier from here.
Short answer: Up until recently. No. Currently and in the future. Yes.