Medicine and Health Sciences Commons^™

Distraction Culture: The Origin Story Of Notification Stress, Benedicte Kalonda

Symposium of Student Scholars

Long gone are the days when procrastination was the sole culprit of poor productivity through the chronic delay of task completion, which has also been linked to a range of stress-related health problems (e.g., headaches, digestive issues, and insomnia). Today’s culture has given rise to the phenomenon of pre-crastination, whereby a technological notification demands and receives immediate attention despite its level of urgency. This propensity to abandon flow and groove is becoming normalized, and the public health impact is currently unknown.

These notifications, a seemingly benign cost of technological advances, are setting the stage for a new level of stressor …