Despite America’s time-consuming obsession with mobile technology, Facebook, Twitter and email, most aren’t stressed out, and women using multiple technologies report significantly less stress, according to a landmark new survey.
The results, contrary to conventional wisdom, are in a new Pew Research Center report that found stress levels vary among tech-savvy women, but remain pretty much level among men.
The study, “Social Media and the Cost of Caring,” found two contrasting — and unexplainable — results for women:
— Those who use a number of digital technologies to communicate with others report 21 percent less stress than those who don’t.
— But women who pay attention to the stress expressed by friends online become more stressed out, a phenomenon Pew calls “the cost of caring.”
Pew tried to explain the contrast:
Pew polled 1,801 adults about the stress they felt, based on the authoritative Perceived Stress Scale. They worked with Professor Keith Hampton, a social media scholar at Rutgers University and his students.
They found that overall, women tend to report more stress than men. Women averaged 10.5 out of 30 on the test, men 9.8.
For men, there was no difference between those who use social media, cell phones and the internet and those who don’t.
But for high use women, stress levels dropped for some reason. Said Pew: “Some tech activities were linked to less stress among women —Twitter use, email use and photo sharing via cell phones. Compared with a woman who does not use these technologies, a woman who uses Twitter several times per day, sends or receives 25 emails per day, and shares two digital pictures through her mobile phone per day, scores 21 percent lower on our stress measure than a woman who does not use these technologies at all.”
But for some women, being plugged in sometimes means they get stressed out by the bad news they read on Facebook, Twitter and elsewhere about their friends and family. Said Pew:
Holding other factors constant, women who were aware that:
— Someone close to them experienced the death of a child, partner, or spouse scored 14 percent higher on our measure of stress.
— Someone close has been hospitalized or experienced a serious accident or injury reported 5 percent higher stress.
— An acquaintance had been accused of or arrested for a crime scored 11 percent higher on the stress measure.
— An acquaintance experienced a demotion or cut in pay reported 9 percent higher stress in their own lives.
Paul Bedard, the Washington Examiner’s “Washington Secrets” columnist, can be contacted at [email protected].
