Infobesity, FOMO & nomophobia…

64 seconds

That’s the time it takes us to regain our train of thoughts after having been interrupted by an incoming message. Which isn’t negligible in the light of a study by the Radicati group stating that, on average, 88 daily emails pop up in an employee’s inbox, without counting the numerous text messages, skype notifications, tweets and others that are now commonly used in the professional sphere… Management is particularly affected, spending over five hours a day checking their inbox (on average 5.4 hours in Europe and 6.3 in the US according to a study by Adobe). The problem? Our culture of permanent interruption and pseudourgency could be hindering genuinely collaborative work, inhibiting creativity and preventing memorisation and concentration on subjects fundamentally requiring unperturbed reflection. To escape the email diktat, some companies are implementing new practices and are moving towards alternative cultures of collaboration. 

The culprit: infobesity

The intensive consumption of digital information causes real symptoms. According to the ORSE’s recent study (French CSR Observatory), 70% of managers admit to suffering from information overload, also known as infobesity. This surcharge of information leads to potentially serious psychological and psychosocial disorders. A loss of meaning most often translated into signs of disengagement and lack of curiosity, memory losses, struggles to make decisions in the face of fluctuating information flows… Worse still, cognitive dysfunctions and health issues.

Valuable vs. idle information

Are these digital stimuli in too high doses inhibiting our thought processes? It has been stipulated that informational surcharge leads to declining mental activity. According to professor Pierre- Marie Lledo, Director at the neuroscience department of the Pasteur Institute and expert on cerebral plasticity, our brain constantly produces new neurons, but this capacity to regenerate is hindered if individuals are exposed to stress and an oversupply of information inducing heightened anxiety. “We live in a digital ecosystem. We are bombarded with information. It is important for us to sort through it. Keep what is useful, the information that fosters understanding, and discard idle one, that provides mere knowledge. We need to fight against infobesity.”

Diminished intellectual performance, then. The myth of multitasking, practice associated with frequent interruptions by messages, is also dwindling. An analysis by the American Psychological Association identifies the negative impacts of multi-tasking: according to researcher D. Meyer, a simple back and forth from one task to another can cause a 40% loss in productivity.

Would you like some more messages with that?

These digital overloads are thus an obstacle to intellectual productivity and can lead to an advanced state of fatigue and lethargy; this conclusion was corroborated by a study led by Hewlett Packard and TNS Research. According to clinical tests carried out by Glenn Wilson, psychiatrist at the famed London Kings College, the IQ of people whose work is distracted by external messages drops by 10 points. A shocking result, as this decline is equivalent to an all-nighter, and even twice as high as the consumption of weed!

The parallel to be drawn with drugs doesn’t stop there. We are now speaking of a real phenomenon of behavioral addictions. Indeed, if infobesity provokes sluggishness in some, it entails bulimic and hypervigilance behaviors in others. A new type of anxiety has emerged: FOMO, the Fear Of Missing Out, this fear that important information could elude you, is impacting growing numbers of individuals in the professional realm. Smartphones, true digital braces, have become a formidable weapon to satisfy these drives. Nomophobia, (from “no mobile phobia”) is a logical consequence. A British investigation has found that more than half of those surveyed feel anxious when their phone is turned off or out of their reach. There is now even a mention of an Internet Addiction Disorder (IAD), notably treated in Asia.

Digital tools are thus double-edged; essential to our daily activities, they have surged into the professional realm, offering unprecedented agility, and we are using and abusing it without hindsight about their effects and consequences. A major challenge faced by corporations who need to turn them into positive and non-alienating tools. Thus, employees are now increasingly equipped to receive their messages, but underprepared in treating them. The means, yes, but not yet the method.

Also to be read in the dossier "Under the Digital Cracklings": 

• Virtual realms with tangible impacts
• The Right to Disconnect