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People’s lives
have become stressful in ways they never would have imagined even a decade ago.
Whoever said there is nothing new under the sun probably never Googled the name
of a restaurant or texted a friend. Changes in technology have brought with them
new pressures and new demands — in short, new sources of stress. For example,
one study of more than 1,300 people found that those who regularly used their
cell phones or portable devices for communication experienced an increase in
psychological distress and a decrease in family satisfaction, compared with
those who used these devices less often. Imagine this implausible scenario:
You’ve
been in a coma for the last 15 years or so. One day, out of the blue, you wake
up and take the bus home from the hospital. You quickly notice that life has
changed. Technology rules. On the bus you notice that everyone is pushing
buttons on small plastic devices. You ask the person next to you what’s going
on, and he looks at you strangely and explains what a smartphone is, what
downloading means, and what e-mail does. You reach your home and discover that
your old television and computer have become relics. Everything is digital.
Everything is portable. People are magically “downloading” movies and
television shows on their telephones. Your cassette player is a joke, not to
mention your record player. Just as quickly, you realize that you have no idea
how to operate any of these digital tools. You have no idea what the words
Skype, Netflix, Kindle, GPS, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, podcast, iPad, and
eBay even mean. All this technology is beginning to drive you a bit crazy. Your
next-door neighbor, who was never in a coma and yet is just as stressed as you
are, is also trying to keep up with all this technological change.
Copyright © Allen Elkin Phd – Originally appeared in Stress
Management for Dummies 2nd edition by Allen Elkin Phd
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