I believe that the increased use of social media can make people more stressed and less focused. In my own experience I became very stressed when first being accustom to being reached by email at anytime of the day when being in a stressful situation, let say in a job situation were you find it hard to ever be able to be off work. However, when I became more used to always being reached by email I got used to this and could however lessen the stress it caused. But I think that the information “overload” that exists can make people more stressed than they themselves believe they are. Checking ones email every night before going to sleep may be custom to many people, but this habit may in fact have an impact on everyday life in the long run. But as said earlier this may be a problem people have started to handle and have come over. But I believe that some self-discipline that could be hard to develop may be needed. And that is why I think that this is or was a negative effect of social media.
In relation to this problem of information overload and self-discipline I also think that the function of always being able to be reached can become increasingly problematic and stressful. Services like Skype, msn, Facebook and mobile-internet increases this stress level and also has an affect on concentration and quality of task performance. Always being able to check ones email, msn, and facebook-account on the mobile phone while being on a subway (or anywhere) makes me stressed as my friends will know that if I don’t answer them in quite a short timeframe, than that most definitely is an active chose not to do so. I am sure that this absolutely will have a stressful effect on people being custom to these sorts of services.
People of today and especially younger people being custom to things like instant messaging since always, may have problems to concentrate while working, studying or performing a time-consuming task. I myself can have a hard time turning of msn while writing etc. This can really affect the performance outcome if focusing too much on communicating with friends online. Also the habit of checking in on any email every 15 min is something I have started doing if waiting for something important. This break from concentration may certainly affect the work I am performing. But this off course also comes with advantages such as the social media increasingly also update my learning etc., by at the cost of focus.
I think that people will be able to handle this in a more progressive way in the feature as I am certain that this will be something that will be discussed and thought about maybe also in an academic setting. It is in school that most people learn to read and have their first literary experiences. I don’t really know if social media will have an affect on in which way student will be able to read and think about literature in the future, but I think that the concerns about this problem of focusing while reading longer and more complicated texts is legitimate.
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Karin, I think that the issue of stress and instantly being reached is very interesting. I agree with you, checking your e-mail all the time or having your mobile phone on instantly is stressing. On the other hand, the development of being able to work on the bus to work or playing games on your iPhone will help you to be more efficient. Since you have done a lot of your work on your way home, you can relax when you come home. However, this might not be true forever. When everyone can work on the bus, you are expected to work full time and an additional hour on the bus. When it is possible to work everywhere, you will feel stressed that you are not working all the time. When I go to bed at night, just before I am about to fall asleep, I usually think “How nice, at least no one expect me to work during the night”. That is such a nice feeling. I might be lucky to feel that, some people work until 2 am and then are expected to be on the office at 9 am. Not much of a good night’s sleep. The tendency to work more increases definitely with the new technologies. I hope that I do not go as far as I work 24/7, because I really do not think that it is sustainable.
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