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Frequent email browsing leads to stress
Medical expert of the article
Last reviewed: 02.07.2025
Today, many people are truly dependent on modern electronic devices (computers, smartphones, etc.). Such people tend to wait for letters from work or colleagues and constantly check their mailbox so as not to miss an important message, and this, according to experts, is a real source of stress. Psychologists believe that a certain behavior pattern can help reduce stress levels, in other words, scientists recommend checking work mail no more than three times a day. Experts believe that it is better to respond to several letters at once than to respond to individual letters each time.
Scientists have found that people who answer their boss's calls outside of work hours (in the evening or on weekends) are more likely to suffer from sleep disorders, headaches, poor digestion, and fatigue. Such a rhythm of life, when personal life is disrupted by work moments, is dangerous for a person's physical and mental health.
More than 100 volunteers took part in the study of this topic, 2/3 of whom were students at higher education institutions, and the rest worked in the medical, financial, computer and other fields.
In the first group, volunteers were required to check their work email no more than three times a day for a week. In the second group, participants could access their email as often as they felt necessary. After a week, the experts changed the conditions of the experiment and in the second group, they reduced their email viewing to three times a day, while in the first group, they were allowed to read emails as they wished.
Throughout the experiment, participants answered questions about their stress levels every day. As a result, the group that checked their inbox no more than three times a day had lower stress levels. However, not all participants found it easy to give up frequent checking of their inbox.
According to experts, it is employers who should pay attention to this point and change the working conditions of their employees.
In recent years, people have begun to use various electronic devices more, in particular smartphones, and a recent study has shown that the less people use various gadgets, the more developed their social skills are.
The study involved sixth-grade schoolchildren who were divided into two groups. About half of the children attended a camp where the use of gadgets was prohibited, while the remaining students were sent to the same camp after the end of the research project.
During the first days of their stay at the camp, it was extremely difficult for the schoolchildren to do without their usual gadgets. At the beginning and end of the experiment, the scientists assessed the volunteers' ability to recognize a person's emotional state from a photograph or video.
The children were shown about 50 images with happy, angry, sad or scared facial expressions and they had to identify the emotional state of the person in the photo. The students were also given a video of interactions between people (for example, taking an exam with teachers) and the students had to describe the feelings that the people in the video were experiencing.
As a result, scientists found that after just five days without gadgets, children’s ability to recognize people’s emotional states significantly improved, in contrast to the group of children who continued to use the achievements of modern technology.
The experts also assessed the number of mistakes that schoolchildren made when determining their emotional state from a photograph or video. At the beginning of the study, the number of mistakes was 14.02%, and by the end it had decreased to 9.41% (the results of the study did not depend on the child's gender).
On average, the children who participated in the experiment played video games or watched TV shows for about 5 hours a day. Experts believe that developing social skills requires direct contact between people, in other words, face to face, and gadgets eliminate this opportunity. Scientists recommend periodically abandoning virtual communication in favor of real meetings.
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