Technology has also caused concepts such as technophobia to emerge, a situation that generally affects older people and is directly related to mental health.
But they also have several negative aspects that influence users, such as the compulsive use of social networks or the social isolation caused mostly in adolescents and children by the misuse of the Internet as a medium.
Over time, psychiatry and psychology have carried out several studies on the harmful effects of technology in the field of mental health, with new concepts such as technophobia, technostress and other symptoms that are always accompanied by the prefix – techno.
Unfortunately, many people cannot access specialized mental health services and may suffer the consequences of living completely in the digital world. No, your mental health applications are not going to solve your problems. For example, associated with the workplace, technostress appears. , a concept that has been studied more as a result of the implementation of teleworking during the pandemic and that is more prevalent among older people. Technophobia is related to it, which the National Institute for Safety and Health at Work (INSST) defined as “a poor adaptation to deal with new technologies in a healthy way.” But, again, there is still much to investigate – and to do.
- Technophobia: from frustration and discomfort to anxiety
Both technostress – more related to work – and technophobia are concepts about which little has been theorized, although they are topics that are accentuated after 40 years since their initial approach.
First of all, it should be noted that not all cases are the same and that each symptomatology of technophobia can be a different world, in addition to the fact that not in all cases technophobia generates deep discomfort – and has a solution, of course.
In this sense, the related pathological typology is that caused by anxiety derived from technophobia; the rest could be classified as common.
Children and adolescents face a world in which they are already born with a lot of technology around them and have “normalized” it. According to the expert, this can unduly cause long-term consequences such as introversion or difficulties in relationships with other people.
Consequently, young adults could “generate dependency and cause this stress, affecting their daily lives.”
Older people appear, who have lived through a period in which everything was done by hand. In this way, issues as basic as getting a receipt from the bank can be Herculean tasks that would lead to discomfort and frustration.
“They don’t have a guide on which they can base themselves to do all these things and, in the end, I think it limits them a lot on a day-to-day basis,” says the expert. “Every time they are supposed to be giving us more facilities, but they are taking them away from them.”
As with any ability learned throughout life, older people face a feeling of inferiority, caused by the lack of training resources for this group.
Possible measures, for example, from the schools themselves to the training of parents at school or courses for the elderly. Above all, educational tools at a preventive level, a key point to avoid – or minimize – future problems.
