Abstract
COVID-19 has come to change societal organization. Due to lockdowns, work typologies have been rethought and telework has gained strength. However, the impact of the constant use of information and communication technologies on the mental health of workers needs to be considered. We aimed to investigate the impact of different work conditions on mental health, to which end we disseminated an online questionnaire during lockdowns to assess imagined surveillance, mobile maintenance expectation, communication overload, feelings of entrapment, depression, anxiety, stress, and flourishing in four groups (employed in telework, employed on-site, employed in layoff, and unemployed). We computed mean comparisons and serial mediations. We show that depression and anxiety were more prevalent in women; parents flourished more than people without children; and people with a higher level of education feel more entrapment. Crucially, we show that telework was associated with imagined surveillance and communication overload, which mediated the association with mobile maintenance expectations and entrapment (which was exacerbated by parenthood), impacting mental health and the quality of life. However, this was also partially observed in the remaining work conditions. Finally, flourishing worked as a protector against mental health issues in all work conditions. We discuss this given the massification of digital migration.
Highlights
Considering the current pandemic situation, resulting from the dissemination of the disease caused by SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19), one essential social change that was implemented to preserve the economy, despite the need for social isolation, was telework.the impact of telework (influenced by the dissemination of information and communication technologies (ICTs)) in our mental health and quality of life is still not known
Our results show that the high level of communication overload is associated with anxiety and stress, while these two mental health issues are negatively associated with flourishing, representing a different model from the other two work conditions discussed before
Our study found that having a child makes the effects of all those mediations stronger, increasing the dependence with technology and decreasing the mental health and quality of life of teleworkers
Summary
Considering the current pandemic situation, resulting from the dissemination of the disease caused by SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19), one essential social change that was implemented to preserve the economy, despite the need for social isolation, was telework.the impact of telework (influenced by the dissemination of information and communication technologies (ICTs)) in our mental health and quality of life is still not known. It is difficult to conceive of the world without ICTs, which are used for teleworking These technologies, which include the mobile phone/smartphone, are used by most of us, with the aim of reducing the social space by accessing the internet, and, in particular, by accessing social networks [1]. The use of these technologies has shown several advantages, such as greater work performance and learning [2], cognition [3], and immediate and nonstop remote communication [4,5]. There are three main categories of telework: regular home-based telework (work from home regularly through ICTs); high mobile telework (work with mobility in several places regularly through ICTs) and occasional telework
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
