Digitaler Stress und die neuen Praktiken der Grenzziehung

The extensive use of digital services increasingly leads to digital stress and has far-reaching, negative effects on recovery phases and subjective expectations of oneself and one’s environment. In terms of mediatisation, media activity itself is changing from an optional offer in the present to a mandatory obligation and the actors themselves must become active to master the diverse challenges and the associated pressure to act. Studies thus diagnose from a communication and media sociological perspective that the present is characterised by a variety of challenges and the associated permanent pressure to act, the reduction of which can and must be subjectively addressed by drawing communicative boundaries. As a result, the various practices aim to limit the advancing mediatisation and the continuously increasing demands on the actor and essentially focus on reducing digital stress.

With a view to the increase in digital stressors and the subjective experience of digital stress, the qualitative long-term study on which this article is based examined how digital stress arises in everyday media life, what subjective dependency factors exist and how processes of de-mediatisation can take place to reduce individual stress by means of boundary setting practices. To this end, the concept of digital stress is first explained, and the study conducted is briefly presented. It is assumed that the particularly age-specific differences regarding subjective media competence and experienced media socialisation, as well as the existing media repertoires, play a role in the conscious and unconscious boundary setting efforts of the actors.

The iterative study design is based on various cyclical and open survey phases and methodologically consisted of guided interviews, group discussions with five of the study participants each and the collection of media diaries and stress diaries during the two-week use of specific apps to reduce digital stress.

Clear differences can be identified across the generations. For example, there are significant differences between people who grew up with media or acquired it at an early age (under 40) and those who only encountered it in their everyday working life or later (over 40), particularly regarding the media used, their handling skills and their attitude towards it. As a result, this has a clear impact on the experience of digital stress and the practices investigated for setting boundaries to reduce it. A total of 17 practices of boundary setting are identified across both groups, which can be summarised in four dimensions.

The practices of reducing, compartmentalising, withdrawing and postponing counter the increasing acceleration of everyday media activity and media users actively try to slow down their own use and reduce the demands on their actions. The digital stress caused by the increasing immediacy is responded to with practices of focusing, holding back, and shielding. In addition to acceleration and immediacy, increasing differentiation also leads to excessive demands and stress, which media users try to limit with the practices of refraining, shifting, prioritising, spatially fixing, creating, and rejecting. With a view to the pressures for optimisation associated with digitalisation and the current processes of social change, there are finally practices of drawing boundaries that can be summarised as distancing, selecting, prioritizing and holding on.

Unlike the older generation, the younger generations use of media has become an obligatory part of everyday life, both for them and for those around them. It can therefore not be dispensed with without valid reasons and an active boundary setting. The immanent obligation to justify the subjective boundary can be understood as an essential demarcation line between the two study groups. Younger people seem to have to constantly distance themselves from the maelstrom of ubiquitous media calls, whereas older people feel less social pressure to use and the associated obligation to justify their practices of boundary setting. For older people in particular, the decision about which media to use and how to use it is clearly an internal one.