ABSTRACT

A broad stream of research strives to understand stress directly or indirectly resulting from the use of information and communication technology (ICT), commonly referred to as technostress. A group at high risk of suffering from the consequences of technostress is adolescents because they grow up using ICT daily and are still developing their identity, acquiring mental strength, and adopting essential social skills. Our research combines a qualitative and a quantitative study and contributes to an understanding of what strategies adolescents use to cope with the demands of ICT use. In qualitative workshops with adolescents, we collect 30 coping responses in five categories. A subsequent quantitative study finds gender- and age-related differences in adolescents’ perception of technostress and concludes that adolescents as a group activate a broad portfolio of coping responses. Exploratory factor analysis reveals five factors underlying adolescents’ activation of coping responses: Avoid Stressful ICT, Follow the Rules, Use ICT Consciously, Contain Negative Emotions, and Acquire ICT. We find that the coping responses related to the Avoid Stressful ICT factor are significantly more common among girls than boys and derive that adolescents who own more devices might have a lower tendency to Follow the Rules. A joint analysis of coping responses and technostress creators reveals that, not surprisingly, coping increases with higher intensity of technostress, but some coping responses break out of this pattern. With this research, we contribute to the theoretical and empirical understanding of an important phenomenon associated with digitalization’s dark sides (technostress coping) in an important yet understudied population (adolescents 10–17 years of age). Future research may build on our work and investigate additional parameters determining differences in adolescents’ coping behavior.

摘要

一系列广泛的研究致力于了解因使用信息和通信技术 (ICT)（通常称为技术压力）而直接或间接产生的压力。遭受技术压力后果的高风险群体是青少年，因为他们每天都在使用 ICT 长大，并且仍在发展自己的身份、获得精神力量并掌握基本的社交技能。我们的研究结合了定性和定量研究，有助于了解青少年使用哪些策略来应对 ICT 使用需求。在针对青少年的定性研讨会中，我们收集了 5 个类别的 30 个应对措施。随后的一项定量研究发现，青少年对技术压力的感知存在性别和年龄相关差异，并得出结论，青少年作为一个群体会激活广泛的应对反应组合。探索性因素分析揭示了青少年应对反应激活的五个因素：避免有压力的 ICT，遵守规则，有意识地使用 ICT，抑制负面情绪，并获得 ICT。我们发现，与避免压力 ICT因素相关的应对反应在女孩中明显高于男孩，并得出结论，拥有更多设备的青少年遵守规则的倾向可能较低. 对应对反应和技术压力创造者的联合分析表明，毫不奇怪，应对随着技术压力强度的增加而增加，但一些应对反应打破了这种模式。通过这项研究，我们有助于对与数字化的阴暗面（技术压力应对）相关的重要现象的理论和实证理解在一个重要但未被充分研究的人群（10-17 岁的青少年）中进行。未来的研究可能会以我们的工作为基础，并调查决定青少年应对行为差异的其他参数。