"Emails, tele-meeting tools, internal messaging, internet access (...). All these tools have turned our lives upside down," William Dab, an epidemiologist and former Director-General of Health, said this week at a conference entitled "Digital stress, an emerging risk".
"Could it be that these tools, or more precisely the uses of these tools, are turning against us?" he asked, during this intervention as part of the Préventica exhibition dedicated to health and safety at work.
"What I find complicated since relatively recently, post-Covid and confinements, is the multiplication of channels, which makes that we no longer know where it comes from," between emails, messages by Teams, WhatsApp, Zoom, SMS ..., testifies to AFP Adrien Debré, lawyer in a business firm. "It makes flow management painful. It's like Russian dolls that need to be opened," he said.
With teleworking and organizations "more and more physically fragmented", "we are all day behind our screens", also reports Jérôme, executive in the banking sector, who did not wish to give his last name. Even in the office, video meetings follow one another "at a train of hell". "It's tired," he says.
For Professor Dab, "we will talk about +digital stress+ when the amount of available information that we have to process exceeds our capacity", a subject "rising" under different names: "infobesity", "digital pain" or "technostress".
'Situation of isolation'
In the eyes of the epidemiologist, "the central phenomenon is that of +overconnection+" which can lead to "mental overload". He points to "a vicious circle with a kind of continuous pressure that makes us zap from one source of information to another", and the feeling at one point of "losing control". A stressful situation "whose extreme form is burnout".
With teleworking and organizations "more and more physically fragmented", "we are all day behind our screens" © Olivier DOULIERY / AFP / Archives
"As a doctor, I analyze this as a new form of addiction" whose consequences are still little known even if those of stress are "very well known," says William Dab.
"Not only mental", these are associated with an "increase in cardiovascular risks, metabolic risks", as well as "immune" effects.
Stress also reduces performance, and digital tools, "if they have opened the door to remote work, also put us in a situation of isolation". "In short, these tools that serve us so well can also alter health and quality of life at work," he says.
To illustrate the "few data" on the subject, Mr. Dab cites a study published in mid-May.
Conducted by the Observatory of infobesity and digital collaboration, it was carried out in particular via the analysis of emails from nearly 9,000 people continuously for two years.
"Toxicity threshold"
Without claiming to have a statistical value in view of the small sample of companies (10), it shows that 31% of employees are exposed to hyper-connection by sending emails after 20:00 more than 50 evenings a year (117 evenings for managers).
"What I find complicated since relatively recently, post-Covid and confinements, is the multiplication of channels, which makes that we no longer know where it comes from", between emails, messages by Teams, WhatsApp, Zoom, SMS ..., testifies an employee © - / AFP / Archives
In addition, more than 50% of emails are answered in less than an hour and these messages generate "a lot of digital noise" with 25% due to "reply all".
The study also measured "full concentration" slots (one hour without sending emails). For executives, their weekly share is only 11% (24% for managers and 42% for employees).
For the epidemiologist, this means "a loss of meaning, efficiency and depth of analysis". "We may be reaching a threshold of toxicity."
But "we can act", assures the epidemiologist: by restricting information to "what is really essential", by keeping "beaches where the screen is closed" or by physical or relaxing activities.
It is, ultimately, a question of "not letting oneself be possessed as one allows oneself to be possessed by hard drugs"...
© 2023 AFP