Cellphones ringing up some stress

Staying connected may be even costlier than you thought.

In a study of more than 1,300 people, those who regularly used cellphones or pagers experienced an increase in psychological distress and a decrease in family satisfaction compared with those who used these devices less often, researchers have found.

No such effects were found with regular use of the Internet and e-mail.

The study also looked at “spillover” -- the seepage of work concerns into home life, and vice versa. For both men and women, “cellphone and pager use allows (negative) job concerns to infiltrate another part of life,” said study author Noelle Chesley, a professor of sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. But women got a “double-whammy,” reporting home concerns that spilled over into work. The study appeared in the December issue of the Journal of Marriage and Family.

To reach their findings, researchers conducted two telephone surveys of 1,367 upstate New York residents between 1998 and 2001. The respondents had an average age of 48, were generally well-educated and mostly had professional or managerial jobs.

What’s new, Chesley said, is evidence “that the technology here is somehow facilitating the process” of psychological distress and decreased family satisfaction, adding to the “debate about whether these technologies are causing these problems.”