How Internet Fatigue can Impact your Work Day
This society is the most connected it has ever been. Mobile devices enable everyone to not only be in constant contact with each other, but they also allow everyone to be in constant contact with everyone. Social media, tweets, texts, emails and there still is an occasional live phone call that all come at people 24/7.
There is a price to pay for all of this connectedness, however. One of them is that distractions can lead to embarrassing accidents. There are movements in many states to outlaw texting and driving. However, Facebook and driving are not any safer. There was even the Wired article from 2009 where “Girl Falls Into Manhole While Texting, Parents Sue”.
Then, there is just general fatigue that can grow by doing the same thing day by day. Looking at a screen all day long and during the evening as well can lead to eye strain and a host of other issues that can begin to interfere at work. Exactly how it will affect someone depends upon the individual and the type of work they do. However, there can be some general symptoms of Internet fatigue that can carry over into many types of work.
Eye strain is perhaps the most obvious. Whether driving, doing research, working at construction or a host of other jobs, eyesight is needed for most. Eye strain can lead to mistakes, which can lead to harm in some professions.
Dealing with things in a reactionary mode rather than in a thoughtful manner is a sign of Internet fatigue. The Internet tends to reinforce this reactive rather than active behavior to begin with. A person might react to an email, a tweet, particular search results, or to other things in a cursory reactive manner. Sentences like, “I don’t read any more; I just skim,” are far too common. Reactions rather than thoughtful actions lead to bad decisions on the job.
Being reactionary can impair creativity as well. Concentration is at a minimum with the constant distractions of emails, tweets, texts and status updates. Creativity has difficulty thriving in an atmosphere where it is starved for full attention. Even when not being creative, the “fatigue” part of Internet fatigue should not be underestimated. When the mind does not have time to rest, then it does not have time to be creative. Many types of work require creative solutions at various points in time, and the timing of those events is often outside of a person’s control. With the constant 24/7 nature of being connected, a person may be ill-equipped at all times for any real emergency requiring nonstandard solutions.
While it may not seem work related, there is the issue of self-actualization. When a person has no time to relax and be creative, their sense of worth can seem to be drained along with the time spent being connected continuously. Lack of reflection, time to plan, time to spend with significant others without interruption, can lead to an overall lack of satisfaction that sooner or later translates into job dissatisfaction. The “why” of working can become warped over time because the time to reestablish those things is not carved out.
While on the Internet, a person is usually looking at some text or at most some thumbnail images of the persons they are interacting with. It can easily lead to forgetting that there is another person on the other side of that screen receiving and reading what is being written. It can have a dehumanizing effect, and this can even be carried over into real life relationships. The evidence is the number of people who whip out their smartphones while surrounded by other people to read a tweet, SMS or status update. That message is more important than the live people surrounding them. Customers might feel slighted, peers might feel neglected, and subordinates will truly feel they are perceived as though they aren’t perceived of as very important.
On 2 September 2012, there was theReconnect Project. Its aim was encourage people to disconnect for 24 hours from the Internet, get out in the real world and creatively recharge. This should not be a one-time event.
People need to regularly unplug and “smell the roses” as they say. Life is much more than electrons, lolcats, status updates and short pithy messages. Real conversations take time. Real books expand the mind in much more than 140 characters. People need to regularly disconnect from the Internet or risk Internet fatigue.
A person’s job, career, heath and family may depend upon it.
