What is "technostress"

n. (context informal English) stress caused by an inability to cope with modern technology.

Technostress is the negative psychological link between people and the introduction of new technologies. Where ergonomics is the study of how humans react to and physically fit with machines in their environment, technostress is a result of altered habits of work and collaboration that are being brought about due to the use of modern information technologies at office and home situations. People experience technostress when they cannot adapt to or cope with information technologies in a healthy manner. They feel compulsive about being connected and sharing constant updates, feel forced to respond to work-related information in real-time, and engage in almost habitual multi-tasking. They feel compelled to work faster because information flows faster, and have little time to spend on sustained thinking and creative analysis.

Craig Brod, a leader in the field of technostress research, states that technostress is "...a modern disease of adaptation caused by an inability to cope with the new computer technologies in a healthy manner." Some of the earliest technostress scholarly studies in the field of Management Information Systems show that technostress is an undesirable phenomenon spawned by use of computing and communication devices such as PC's, tablets and smartphones. It is dependent on gender, age and computer literacy. Women experience lower technostress than men, older people experience less technostress at work than younger people and those with greater computers literacy experience lower technostress.