One in eight British people have broken their gadgets or tech in a fit of rage, a survey claims.
Commissioned by online mobile and tech supporter Wiztek, the poll of 2,000 adults found that many people have lost patience with their tech devices at some point.
On average, those polled said they will experience 63 IT issues a year – including intermittent WiFi, endless pop-up adverts and paper jams in printers.
And typically they will begin to become frustrated after spending 12 minutes trying to fix technical problems.
A third of those surveyed said that they have become so tired of dealing with these problems that they have purchased a completely new device instead of getting their old one repaired.
One in five have even fallen out with their partner as a direct result of their phone, computer or tablet not working as it should.
Paul Amsellem, CEO of Wiztek, said: “Tech is an integral part of lives – whether it be through our jobs or through our home lives.
“And as such, we’d be significantly hampered in our daily lives – unable to check emails for important messages, use sat nav to successfully get from A to B or to keep track of appointments.
“So when our devices stop working or don’t operate as they should it understandably becomes very frustrating.”
Over 45 per cent of those polled said they are not very knowledgeable when it comes to resolving computer and tech issues.
And three in ten say they have made the problem worse when trying to fix their gadgets.
The study also found that 40 per cent of the population has been left unable to work following problems with IT equipment.
And 25 per cent have lost important files such as cherished family photos and key documents as a direct result of a tech failure.
Mr Amsellem added: “Tech and computing issues are such a minefield – there’s so many possible causes to everyday problems, even the most knowledgeable of people can get stumped from time to time.
“Downtime from tech problems can lead to many wasted hours and in today’s society where we are all so busy, time costs money.''
The top 20 most annoying tech problems
1. Slow internet
2. Slow computer
3. Pop-up ads
4. WiFi keeps disconnecting
5. Forgotten password
6. Slow downloads
7. Software updates making things worse
8. Can't login
9. Printer won't work
10. Phone battery keeps dying quickly
11. Accidentally deleting something important
12. App keeps on crashing
13. Paper jams
14. "Blue screen of death"
15. Can't open email attachments
16. Keep seeing "there is a problem with this website's security certificate"
17. Ink not printing properly
18. Hard drive failure
19. Remembering where you stored particular files/data
20. Running out of hard drive space
SWNS
