Digital Work Stressors and Employee Well-Being: A Systematic Review of Evidence Types, Boundary Conditions, and Organisational Responses

Background Digital technologies have changed how work is paced, monitored and bounded. Studies of technostress and related digital demands differ in what they treat as the exposure and the outcome, and in their evidence on processes, boundary conditions and organisational responses. Methods We searched Scopus, ScienceDirect, Wiley Online Library and Springer Nature on 3 September 2026 for English-language empirical studies published from 2010 to 2026 that linked a work-related digital stressor to employee well-being. Study quality was appraised with the Mixed Methods Appraisal Tool. Findings were synthesised by vote counting based on direction of effect, without meta-analysis. The review was not registered. Results Of 2,742 records, 353 full-text reports were assessed and 80 were included (78 quantitative non-randomised studies, one mixed-methods study, one experiment), with about 95,900 participants. Seventy reports pointed to poorer well-being (87.5%; 95% confidence interval 78.5% to 93.1%), eight pointed in conflicting directions and two to better well-being. Among reports of a demand, the share ranged from 72.2% for positive well-being to 95.7% for recovery and sleep, and was 76.3% in larger and 97.4% in smaller studies. Three studies that separated the demand from technology use found the adverse association for the demand only. Process and moderation tests (57 and 45 reports) gave selective support, and lagged tests gave mixed results. No report evaluated an implemented organisational response; 62 offered recommendations only. Certainty of the evidence was rated very low. Conclusions Digital demands experienced at work are associated with poorer employee well-being in most studies, though less uniformly in larger and better-controlled ones; the association appears to belong to the demand, not to technology use as such. Evidence for processes is largely cross-sectional, and evidence for organisational responses is absent.