Does your phone limit your ‘technostress’?
How stressed out you get by your smartphone habits could come down to whether or not your phone suits your personality, according to a new study about "technostress."
In the study, the research team applied four key personality traits to varying levels of technostress that people experience depending on what kind of phone they use.
First, they observed participants who believe that their actions determine their rewards and found them more stressed out by their smartphones than by traditional phones.
Simply put, the smartphones make it harder for these individuals to detach from work, the researchers concluded.
"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," they wrote.
Next, they applied the concept of social interaction anxiety (SIA), for those anxious about socializing are more likely to do so in the seemingly protective, virtual world.
These individuals are more likely to experience technostress as a result of checking their messages too frequently, a habit promoted by smartphones, according to the researchers.
Thirdly, those with a need for touch have more of a tendency to fiddle with smartphones than with conventional phones, sending their technostress levels soaring, according to the study.
The fourth trait they observed was that of materialism, which turned out to be the only one of the four that promoted more technostress for users of conventional phones than for smartphone users.
Having the latest, stylish smartphone brings about a material rush that limits how much stress the gadget could bring you, say the researchers.
Technostress should not be taken lightly, say the authors, but rather should be recognized by healthcare professionals as a very real possibility.
The authors, whose study was published in the journal Behavior & Information Technology, recommend reducing or limiting mobile phone usage.
A 2012 study involving 269 female university students in Taiwan found that low self-esteem, anxiety, neuroticism and extraversion were all associated with problematic mobile phone usage.
Heavy mobile phone usage has been associated with increased fatigue and sleep problems and increased risk of depression, all of which are symptoms of stress, the researchers write.
