New technologies have burst into our lives, computers, tablets or smartphones allow us to be connected to the digital world 24 hours a day. This has caused our way of relating to others and to the environment and, in many cases, this has had a positive influence on our quality of life, because they facilitate greater access to information and provide us with new professional and leisure opportunities.

No one can doubt the benefits of new technologies; however, not everything is rosy, and experts have been warning us for some time about the risks of their misuse. Nomaphobia, FOMO Syndrome or Technostress are some examples.

Today we will talk about another disorder associated with technological advances, technophobia, which is characterized by either aversion or irrational fear of new technologies and the digital world .

What is technophobia

Technophobia is a complex concept, and there is not much research on it. On the one hand, there seem to be different degrees, and according to one of the first researchers to study the phenomenon for 30 years, Larry Rosen, a psychologist at the University of California, there seem to be three categories of technophobic subjects:

  • Uncomfortable technophobes : are those people who do not master new technologies, use them but are not comfortable doing so.
  • Cognitive technophobes : use them but with fear, as they feel they are not fully capable.
  • Anxious technophobes : it is considered pathological and the person experiences an irrational fear towards the use of new technologies.

Therefore, the symptoms of technophobia range from feeling uncomfortable and insecure to the pathological extreme of feeling great anxiety when the person is in contact with new technologies.

This term first appeared in the American psychiatrist Craig Brod’s book “Technostress: The Human Cost of the Computer Revolution”, which was published in 1984. For the author, technostress is “an adaptive disease that has its origin in the high ability to deal with new computer technologies in a healthy way”.

Causes of this phenomenon

The causes of technophobia can be varied, as can its manifestations. In less serious cases the origin can be found in the perception that the individual has when mastering technological devices, a special insecurity that prevents him/her from adapting to technological change. We could imagine, for example, the manager of a business who is unable to adapt to new technologies, because he thinks he will not be able to use them, even though it will benefit his company considerably. Or the guy who does not want to update his mobile phone because he does not know how to use smartphones.

In fact, studies suggest that, starting at age 40, adults have greater difficulty getting used to using computers and other technological gadgets, one of the causes, research suggests, may be fear of the unknown. In other words, and as Rosa Farah, from the Center for Research in Psychology in Computer Science at PUC-SP (Sao Paulo) states, “it is not the technological devices that cause fear, but rather to show their own inability to use the machine”.

However, technophobia in extreme cases can be a phobic disorder and therefore can originate as a consequence of a traumatic event from the past, due to the classical conditioning process. Some experts also refer to this irrational fear as cyberphobia. Phobic disorders can also be learned by observation, through a phenomenon known as “vicarious conditioning.

Symptoms of Fear of Technology

As explained throughout the article, there are different manifestations of this phenomenon, so the intensity of the symptoms may vary from one individual to another. However , the symptoms of technophobia are presented in relation to the use of technological devices or anything related to new technologies , and the most characteristic are

  • Feelings of fear and, in extreme cases, panic.
  • Anxiety and anguish.
  • Palpitations.
  • Restlessness.
  • Sweating.
  • Shortness of breath and hot flushes.
  • Tremors.
  • Lack of concentration.
  • Avoidance of the feared stimulus.

Treatment for this phobia

Since the severity of the phenomenon can vary, many times this fear can be overcome by training the individual in the handling of new technologies, encouraging him/her to take short courses and showing him/her that he/she can learn to handle the new technologies, which are so useful nowadays.

However, in serious cases, psychological help may be necessary . Psychotherapy is very effective as shown by many researches, and generally cognitive behavioural therapy is used, which employs different techniques.

For the treatment of phobias, the most used are relaxation techniques and exposure techniques. However, the most commonly used is one that uses both: it is called systematic desensitization. With this type of treatment the patient learns different coping skills and is exposed to the fear in a systematic and gradual way, that is, he confronts the feared stimulus while learning to control the physical and mental reactions that are characteristic of his phobia.

But this form of treatment is not the only one that has been shown to be effective for this type of disorder. Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy and acceptance and engagement therapy are also useful.

Both belong to a group of so-called third generation behavioural psychotherapies.

  • In our article “What are third generation therapies?” we explain them to you.

Types of phobias

Phobias are relatively frequent anxiety disorders, and a large part of the population suffers from them in the presence of different stimuli: spiders, snakes, clowns, etc.

  • If you want to know the different types of phobias that exist, you can visit our article “Types of phobias: exploring fear disorders”