As Mental Health Week begins, it provides us with the opportunity to reflect on our individual and collective emotional and mental well-being. It also gives us a chance to examine sources of stress in our lives and come up with strategies for overcoming them. A pervasive source of stress nowadays is technology — in particular, our interactions with technology.

Today in The Conversation Canada, Brittany Harker Martin from the University of Calgary writes about digital distress — a type of psychological distress that can occur when interacting with technology.

Digital distress, Martin explains, arises from “small but frequent frustrations that quickly dissipate, but when added up become micro-aggressive tech-triggers.” Martin outlines the main sources of digital distress and how they can affect us.

Martin offers several strategies for coping with digital distress. By taking small, proactive steps, she writes, we can reduce this type of distress and improve our mental health.

Also today:

Regards,

Eleni Vlahiotis

Assistant Editor, Business + Economy

Small, proactive countermeasures can reduce digital distress and make us feel more empowered over our mental health. (Pexels/Andrea Piacquadio)

Are you under digital distress? 3 ways tech-triggers may be affecting your mental health

Brittany Harker Martin, University of Calgary

Many stressors may be coming from interactions with technology: small but frequent frustrations that quickly dissipate, but when added up trigger digital distress.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau speaks to the media during a visit with members of the Canadian Armed Forces at CFB Kingston in Kingston, Ont., in March 2023. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick

Canadians have lots of reasons to be skeptical about increased defence spending

Eric Van Rythoven, Carleton University

Canadians are dubious about boosting defence spending for an array of reasons. It’s time for politicians and pundits not to admonish them, but to listen to them.

The greater the diversity of plant and animal species in a wildlife-friendly garden, the more healthy and resilient it is. (Shutterstock)

How greenwashing can lead us astray in the pursuit of wildlife-friendly gardens

Paul Manning, Dalhousie University

Instead of focusing their limited time, energy and finances in effective interventions in their gardens, many individual gardeners are falling prey to greenwashing.

An online exhibition includes access to personal newspaper advertisements from 1860 to 1879 transcribed from archives. (Jacquelyn Sundberg and Nathalie Cooke)

How encrypted Victorian newspaper personal ads shaped fiction like Sherlock and Enola Holmes

Jacquelyn Sundberg, McGill University; Nathalie Cooke, McGill University

Personal ads of ‘the Agony Column’ were full of longing, tragedy and profound misfortune. Intrigue they generated has had an enduring effect on literature and film.

La Conversation Canada

C’est l’activité humaine, à travers l’émission de gaz à effet de serre, qui a causé le déséquilibre énergétique de la Terre. (Shutterstock)

Le bilan énergétique de la Terre n’est pas à l’équilibre. Doit-on s’inquiéter ?

Marta Moreno Ibáñez, Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM)

C’est l’activité humaine, à travers l’émission de gaz à effet de serre, qui a causé le déséquilibre énergétique de la Terre.

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