Alleviate 5 Kinds of Techno-Stress

How many times have you looked at an email, opened a text message, or noticed your phone vibrate and experienced a buildup of tension in your shoulders or a spike in your blood pressure? We’ve all felt the stress technology can cause, but we, as educators, rarely stop to investigate which technologies are causing us stress.

Education is one of the most rewarding occupations to pursue, but it is also one of the most stressful. Traditional stressors such as legislative mandates, paperwork, a lack of planning and preparation time, and issues with families and students are enough to fuel burnout. But the technology we use on a daily basis can add to that stress and cause our plates to overflow.

Technology has had a positive impact on certain aspects of K–8 education, but it also has a dark side. Researchers often fail to examine the negative effects of technology on educators because a teacher—similar to a lawyer or a pastor—is seen as having a face-to-face occupation, according to the 2019 article “Digitalization in Knowledge Work: The Dream of Enhanced Performance.”

COVID-19 changed the education landscape permanently, forcing teachers worldwide to convey lessons, assign and accept student work, and provide feedback remotely. This sudden leap into the 21st century created an environment to which educators are adapting quickly, and yet they often unknowingly feel the added stress technology has created.

Is Your School Stressed?

As a building leader, you must get to know your staff and listen to them when they talk. If you want to know if technology is affecting your teachers, ask them how they spend their time away from school. If the answer is that they are communicating with families, trying to learn a new technology that has been installed or updated, or getting caught up on emails, it’s probably reasonable to assume they are suffering from techno-stress.

The shift to a tech-dependent environment in the classroom has had an effect on teachers. While created to help accomplish a variety of tasks, software applications frequently require updating and relearning. Technology has enabled communication with families, students, colleagues, and administrators 24/7, blurring the boundaries between school and home and causing work-life imbalances.

One teacher at our school was amazed at how often parents expect her to be on the phone at 8 p.m. on a Saturday to respond to questions and concerns. She was trying to spend time with her own family but felt she needed to respond to text messages from parents. There’s a time and place to be responsive to the needs of your school community, and there’s a time that should be dedicated to one’s own well-being, leisure, family, and friends.

5 Kinds of Techno-Stress

The stress brought on by the use or anticipated use of technology is known as “techno-stress.” Clinical psychologist Craig Brod originally coined the term in the early 1980s as “technostress,” and the phenomenon has been studied ever since. More extensive research identified five techno-stressors: techno-complexity, techno-uncertainty, techno-insecurity, techno-overload, and techno-invasion.

Do these stressors impact teacher burnout? Yes: A 2023 study of rural high school teachers in Arkansas revealed that burnout correlates directly to three of the techno-stressors listed above: techno-insecurity, techno-overload, and techno-​invasion. Leaders should focus their efforts on all areas, though, because even the smallest stressors can add fuel to the teacher burnout fire. Let’s look at each:

1. Techno-complexity. This is the feeling of inadequacy users experience when they need to spend time and effort to learn and develop new skills in order to use information and communication technology (ICT). Humans are creatures of habit and will often try to apply old solutions to new problems and technologies, according to “The Consequences of Technostress for End Users in Organizations,” a 2008 article by T.S. Ragu-Nathan,
Monideepa Tarafdar, Bhanu S. Ragu-Nathan, and Qiang Tu. But using existing solutions with the latest technology might result in reduced performance, exacerbating the end user’s feelings of insecurity and anxiety.

2. Techno-uncertainty. This is that uncertain feeling users have from constant changes and upgrades to ICT. Schools and organizations often adopt products that change rapidly, and constant change stresses staff because it undercuts their ability to create meaningful patterns in the workplace, leading to a feeling of unpredictability.

3. Techno-insecurity. Technology can produce a fear of personal obsolescence. Teachers might feel as if they are no longer as effective in the school environment because of technological advancements. They might worry about losing their jobs or status to a software application or someone who is better at using it. Techno-insecurity in teaching and learning can also stem from deficiencies with ICTs—operational issues in dealing with lack of access, poor connectivity, or outdated and unstable hardware and software.

Teachers in the Arkansas study demonstrated low levels of techno-insecurity, but even those low levels showed a correlation to levels of teacher burnout. As technology and the use of artificial intelligence (AI) become more prevalent in education, levels of techno-insecurity might increase alongside teacher burnout.

The most important thing administrators can do to combat this is to provide staff with professional development that’s relevant to the technologies they use. We should also encourage teachers to communicate with colleagues so they can help one another with technology concerns, as well as look for ways that AI and other ed tech resources can help teachers with day-to-day tasks.

4. Techno-overload. Techno-overload is when ICT forces users to work faster and/or longer than they are accustomed to, causing physical, emotional, and cognitive stresses. Techno-overload often includes multitasking on multiple apps or platforms, and it can impair performance by limiting time for organizational tasks, innovative thinking, and problem-solving.

Among multiple information streams, email is the most consuming for educators. Excessive email traffic often causes teachers and administrators to adjust their work habits or lengthen their workdays in an effort to sort through, process, and respond to the messages they receive daily. Many emails need to be addressed, but many more simply take up time and space to filter through before deletion.

The good news is that by establishing organizational norms, schools can help clean up some of the email pollution that affects educators. Schools can lower email traffic by reiterating to staff that school email use should focus solely on the communication of school business. Encourage staff to use different platforms, such as text messaging or face-to-face discussions, for nonschool communications.

5. Techno-invasion. ICT can cause users to be constantly connected and reachable at any time, blurring the boundaries between work and home. For many educators, working beyond normal work hours is standard operating procedure. Whether a teacher is creating lesson plans, grading papers, or communicating with parents, colleagues, or students, K–12 educators often expect to work late or from home multiple nights a week.

Teachers and administrators often feel the need to respond to email correspondence from parents, students, and colleagues as soon as possible. Establishing and communicating a response time norm can help mitigate stress—for example, a guideline setting a 24-hour response time for emails during the work week.

Teachers and administrators can be encouraged to log off of school email after hours to resist the urge to check messages, as well as encourage staff to respect everyone else’s time away from school. Working late or on the weekend doesn’t mean others are. Schedule your own emails to go out the next school day before school starts, no matter when you write them.

Toward a Less Stressful School

Education is an inherently stressful occupation. But potential techno-stressors shouldn’t be given free rein over our lives. To limit techno-stress and its effects:

• Speed the learning curve. Be transparent when your school makes decisions about updates to communication technologies, ed tech, digital curricula, and other tech. Offer ample training and support to ensure that teachers and staff can use technology effectively.
• Eliminate spam. To limit email pollution and the time it takes to clean up, encourage staff to keep their messages professional. (That joke might be funny, but is it schoolwide funny?) Establishing email norms can cut spam by an estimated 27 percent, limiting the amount of time staff need to sort through their inboxes.
• Protect work-life boundaries. Administrators must lead by example and work to protect and reclaim free time. Establish a strict work-life boundary and encourage staff to be present mentally and emotionally in both settings. Consider giving staff flexible time to handle school tasks such as emails so they don’t need to check from home.

The causes of educator stress and burnout are numerous. As leaders, it is our job to look out for staff and provide them with whatever they need to teach students. Recognize the ways you can remove techno-stressors from our workplaces. In doing so, you can reclaim the time and energy technology has taken and douse the flames that add to educator burnout.

Jason Reeves is assistant principal of Alma High School in Alma, Arkansas.