Balding’s study suggests that because smartphone’s allow for easy access to social networks like Facebook and Twitter, the pressure to keep up with one’s social life becomes a large contributor to stress.
“The presence of information a smartphone can provide may indeed work to overwhelm people within their already busy and demanding environment,” psychology professor Paul Beckmann said. “It’s like having a fire hose of information.”
Many students said that they agree with the study, and sophomore Mauricio Carranza said that smartphones keep people “wondering what everyone is doing at every minute of every hour of every day.”
“Then you are wondering what other people think of what you are doing,” Carranza said.
Freshman Samantha Bogdanovich said that she agrees that smartphones not only add stress, but they also interrupt everyday activities.
“If you are talking to someone on Facebook or texting and then there is something going on that is stressful, it interrupts what you are doing,” Bogdanovich said.
Beckmann said that smartphones are an issue because people “don’t have the mental horsepower to deal with everything in the environment.”
“There may be other things going on in an environment, but we are selecting those things out,” Beckmann said.
Bogdanovich said that she does not believe turning the device off will necessarily solve the problem.
“I feel like maybe if you just didn’t have it with you because you can always just turn it back on, I think that would help,” Bogdanovich
The study also found that smartphone use for work purposes did not increase stress levels.
“I prefer to read my emails on my phone,” sophomore Max Bischmann said. “If I am out on the go, I want to know what is going on.”
Carranza said that he is sometimes relieved when his phone is not able to distract him.
“I am actually sometimes happy when it (phone) is not charged or the battery goes out sometimes. You’re like, ‘OK, I don’t have to worry about that anymore,’” Carranza said.
The research suggests that those people who are most stressed out, experience phantom vibrations. A phantom vibration is when a person thinks their phone has vibrated when it really has not.
“You can develop heightened sensitivity under conditions of stress…if they have a high level of stress they may have a muscle tremor,” Beckmann said. “That muscle tremor may be a real movement of their skin against their cellphone rather than their cellphone against their skin.”
The study was conducted by a questionnaire that was administered to over 100 participants, including university students and employees from a range of occupations.
Patrick Roche can be reached at roch6667@stthomas.edu
A growing body of research indicates that practicing mindfulness can significantly reduce stress and other psychological problems. Little wonder, then, that being absorbed in your phone and oblivious to the world around you has the opposite effect.