Long day at work? Go ahead and watch TV!
Stop feeling guilty for vegging out on the couch after work. New research suggests it's an effective way to help combat burnout, particularly when your home is chaotic (we see you families with kids).
image: Soo Min Toh is Professor of Organizational Behaviour at the University of Toronto Mississauga, with a cross-appointment to the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management. Her research program focuses on understanding organizational cultures, leadership, migration, intergroup relations, and employee wellbeing. Prof. Toh's research has been published in premier academic and practitioner journals in the disciplines of management and psychology, such as the Academy of Management Review, the Academy of Management Journal, the Journal of Applied Psychology, and Psychological Science. She has also edited books on expatriate and global mobility management, as well as pedagogy. She has served on the editorial boards of the Journal of Applied Psychology, Journal of International Business Studies, and the Journal of World Business. Prof. Toh's directs the Culture, Relationships and Well-Being Lab (CRAWL) that consists of students at all levels committed to understanding difference and inclusion for the purpose of bettering potential, relationships and well-being of individuals and groups. She was also Director of the Institute for Management & Innovation at the University of Toronto Mississauga where she led an inter-disciplinary research and undergraduate/professional graduate/executive teaching agenda from 2017-2023. Her work is frequently featured in the media, including in the Globe & Mail, the New York Times, and the Financial Times. She received her PhD from Texas A&M University, and her Bachelor of Business at the Nanyang Technological University in Singapore.
Credit: Rotman School of Management
Long day at work? Go ahead and watch TV!
Stop feeling guilty for vegging out on the couch after work. New research suggests it's an effective way to help combat burnout, particularly when your home is chaotic (we see you families with kids).
Brain dead after a hard day of work? It turns out, it’s totally fine to park yourself in front of the TV. It might even make recovery — an essential part of burnout prevention — easier.
Workplace stress can take a major toll on a person’s health. Research has shown that recovery is important to preventing burnout, depression and other negative health effects.
There are many ways managers can help reduce workplace stress and emotional exhaustion among their employees during the work day. But what happens when those employees go home to chaotic environments — households where children are fighting, chores need doing and meals need cooking — making it nearly impossible to recover from the day?
“Household size is really about how many demands a person experiences when they go home. We tend to think that home might be a place of rest, but when you have more people — at least when you look at it in terms of number of children — it could create more demands for someone and so it’s not necessarily a place for recovery,” says Soo Min Toh, a professor of organizational behaviour at the University of Toronto Mississauga and the Rotman School of Management.
And, in her latest research, she found that adult screen time might be the (not so secret) remedy.
Over a series of studies, Toh and her coauthor Xian Zhao of Ohio University found that watching television, scrolling on smartphones and playing video games after work might “buffer” the effect of stress in chaotic households — helping people feel more relaxed at home, and therefore, aid in their recovery from the day’s stressors.
First, Toh and Zhao used a dataset from the American Time Use Survey (ATUS), which is conducted by the United States Census Bureau, and is often used by psychologists, economists and other social scientists. The pair looked at how much time more than 61,000 American married adults spent watching TV, how many kids they had, and the extent to which they felt tired and stressed.
Predictably, they found that households with kids rated feeling more fatigued and stressed. Yet, in an interesting twist, even with kids in the house, those that spent more time watching TV said they experienced less stress and tiredness.
The researchers also surveyed more than 100 Canadian postsecondary students on their levels of home chaos (rating statements such as “I can’t hear myself think at home”). Students then filled out nightly surveys on smartphone usage and daily moods. Those who reported higher levels of home chaos also reported more negative moods. But, when people spent more time on their phones, their negative mood wasn’t as intense.
The final study looked at nightly video game use, and participants’ level of focus on work the following day. More than 100 Canadian postsecondary students were recruited and initially asked how many housemates they lived with. Over the following week, the students reported their time spent on video games, and their levels of reattachment to work the next morning (for example, “Before I started my day this morning, I was mentally prepared for it”). While people who had more housemates had a harder time getting back into the groove at work the next day, those who played video games didn’t have as much difficulty reconnecting to work.
“There is a buffering effect of screen time to household demands, strain and chaos, number of people and responsibilities,” says Toh. “When people use digital devices, it can provide a space or a break, or even a relief or detachment, from both the demands at home and at work.”
Next, she’d like to explore how people use their digital devices, and whether that impacts their mood, stress recovery and reattachment to work. (Does watching the news cause more stress than indulging in a favourite television show? Do action-packed games leave people feeling amped compared to chill phone games that let people zone out?)
Toh adds that the study didn’t take digital device addiction into account, which could potentially have negative effects on recovery.
“We’re not suggesting you should spend more time on your phone,” Toh says. “There’s that caution that if you do spend too much time on these devices, you might have more fatigue and you won’t experience those recovery benefits.”
Despite the risks of overuse, Toh believes her findings serve as a reminder that people shouldn’t be so hard on themselves when it comes to their digital device use.
“Screen time can actually be helpful to recovery,” she says. “It allows you to take a breather and be in this space where you get a break from all your responsibilities and that can be quite restorative for recovering our resources. We are really hard on ourselves and what we do in our free time. I think the message of this paper is, don’t stress about it.”