Experts fear the outbreak may be a result of 'inbox tyranny', described by the work think-tank, the Industrial Society, as 'the dread of feeling that your inbox is silently filling up'. People get 100 emails a day, and because it is so quick they feel that they must respond to it immediately. It is a distraction. A recent survey by computer manufacturers Compaq and pollsters Mori questioned more than 1,250 workers in Britain. Nearly half felt frustrated by the time taken to solve IT problems and two in five blamed computer jargon for exacerbating the issue.
Research shows the problem is likely to increase.
Internet analysts Jupiter project that marketing related email messages will increase 40-fold by 2006. Ferraris Research estimates that by next year workers will spend four hours a day reading and answering on average 50 work-related messages. Today we deal with 30 a day, up 50 per cent from last year. While the Health and Safety executive recommend workers spend between 20 and 40 minutes a time at a computer on health grounds, there is, as yet, little research on whether time spent at terminals should be limited on stress grounds. The International Stress Management Association ranks emails among the top 20 causes of stress.