Does connecting to the WiFi on your college campus ever make you want to toss your computer out the window? Well the good news is: 1. You’re not alone, and 2. You probably have a good reason to actually follow through with that now.
That’s because a report published by Ericsson, a mobile broadband company, is claming that slow internet speeds can actually stress you out, and that delays while loading content on your phone can increase your heart rate by about 38 percent. As Mic points out, Ericsson being in the business of mobile broadband means they have a financial stake in making your want faster internet.
These results came after the company monitored the heart rates of several participants as they watched a YouTube video. According to the study, waiting for a video to rebuffer for six seconds causes your stress levels to rise 15 percentage points. Even a delay as small as two seconds causes some peoples’ rate to go up three percentage points.
It gets better though. Apparently these increases in stress levels are comparable to the stress we experience while watching horror movies. So, basically, staying calm while connecting to wifi is like trying to survive a horror film—it just doesn’t happen for everyone.
The study never actually gets into why we get so riled up when we’re trying to connect, but it does seem to point at the fact that many of us smartphone users always have extremely quick access to information at the press of a button. In other words, we’ve been conditioned to rely on instant gratification from computers so heavily that we freak out any time we have to wait even one second for the tiniest bit of information. So next time your Facebook video won’t load, maybe try taking a few deep breaths—all that stress can’t be good for you.