News

December 16th, 2025 - Press notes

Working on digital platforms affects the health and well-being and causes chronic stress, anxiety and fatigue

These are some of the conclusions of the report "Working on digital platforms: What do we know about health and safety?", a joint study by UPF and the Hospital del Mar Research Institute Barcelona, within the framework of the international project GIG-OSH, which has collected data from seven European countries.

Working on digital platforms has become a "digital fatigue economy" that affects people's health, well-being and safety, and causes chronic stress, anxiety and fatigue, in addition to emotional exhaustion and difficulty disconnecting. So concludes a study carried out by Pompeu Fabra University (UPF) and the Hospital del Mar Research Institute Barcelona (HMRIB).

Through the testimonies collected in Spain, the report "Working on digital platforms: What do we know about health and safety?" highlights the tension between the promise of autonomy and the reality of algorithmic control, a dynamic that many people describe as being trapped in an invisible wheel, where every effort to improve the situation reinforces the cycle of precariousness.

The study is part of the international research project, GIG-OSH (New challenges for occupational safety and health in times of digital transformation in Europe), carried out between 2022 and 2025 involving nine research institutions from seven European countries. In Spain, the research has been led by two principal investigators and their respective teams: for UPF, Joan Benach, director of the GREDS-EMCONET research group of the Department of Political and Social Sciences and co-director of the JHU-UPF Public Policy Center, and for the HMRIB, Mireia Julià, linked to the Hospital del Mar School of Nursing (ESIHMar) and a researcher with the Social Determinants and Health Education (SDHEd) research group.

Algorithms that shape new forms of digital subordination

The study  shows that so-called flexible working appears, in many cases, as a response to the need rather than a voluntary choice. Far from constituting true emancipation from salaried work, most platform workers experience limited autonomy, characterized by contractual insecurity, income variability, and algorithmic management. "Algorithms designed to optimize efficiency in production processes end up forming new kinds of digital subordination: they assign tasks, measure performance, penalize inactivity, determine income, and model behaviour through reputation and scoring. In this system, dependency is disguised as entrepreneurship and uncertainty is normalized as the price for apparent freedom", assert the researchers responsible for the study in Spain.

Consequences for people's health and well-being

This algorithmic work structure has profound consequences on the health and well-being of workers. "The evidence generated throughout the project reveals that constant exposure to control, unpredictable income and competition generate chronic stress, anxiety and fatigue. The risk is not just physical (accidents, musculoskeletal disorders or exposure to toxic substances) but also psychosocial: the blurring of boundaries between work and personal life, a feeling of isolation, emotional exhaustion, constant insecurity, difficulty in disconnecting, and the inability to plan for the future", the authors state. In this context, health becomes an indicator of inequality, a mirror that reflects the consequences of a work model that fragments rights, makes work precarious and dilutes responsibilities.

GIG-OSH highlights a crisis of modern labour protection

The international project GIG-OSH shows that platform work has upset the basic assumptions of modern labour protection: the notion of an identifiable employer, the idea of a stable workplace, or the distinction between working and personal time. "This overspill requires redefining the governance of work from a transdisciplinary approach that combines regulation, inspection, collective bargaining and scientific knowledge. The central question is no longer just how to protect those working on platforms, but how to guarantee rights and health in a decentralized production system managed by algorithms. The challenge is not to reject the technology, but to politicize its design and effects", the researchers emphasize.

GIG-OSH combines a mixed and collaborative methodology integrating quantitative and qualitative analyses in seven European countries: Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Poland, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom. The surveys, carried out on almost four thousand workers in total (in Spain, 575 people took part in the first wave, of which 186 did face-to-face tasks and 388 worked remotely), allow us to characterize employment conditions, income, risks and perceived health. Regarding the in-depth interviews, a total of 124 workers (some twenty in Spain) and 24 key players, such as trade union representatives, government representatives and platform managers, were interviewed. This combination of data enables identifying both common patterns and national specificities and offers a broad and comparative understanding of how digitization is redefining the boundaries of work and social protection.

Reference work

Julià Pérez, M, Padrosa Sayeras, E, Verdaguer Johé, S, Vicente Castellví, E, Benach, J, Belvis, F, Gutiérrez-Zamora Navarro, M, et al. (october 25) "Working on digital platforms: what do we know about health and safety?: results of the GIG-OSH Project"

http://doi.org/10.31009/jhu.upf.ppc.2025.sr01c