Healthy lifestyle profiles were strongly associated with technostress in a large cross-sectional occupational sample, with workers achieving HLS scores of 2 or 3 showing markedly lower odds of high-to-very high technostress (OR ≈ 0.073–0.074) compared to those with HLS = 0, suggesting a threshold-like rather than progressive association.
Key Findings
Results
The prevalence of high-to-very high technostress dropped markedly at HLS scores of 2 and 3 compared to scores of 0 and 1.
Prevalence of high-to-very high technostress was 50.8% among workers with HLS = 0 and 50.7% among those with HLS = 1.
Prevalence decreased markedly to 7.5% and 7.2% among workers with HLS = 2 and HLS = 3, respectively.
Differences across HLS categories were statistically significant (p < 0.001).
The pattern suggests a threshold effect rather than a gradual, progressive dose-response relationship.
Results
Workers with HLS = 2 and HLS = 3 exhibited substantially lower adjusted odds of high-to-very high technostress compared to those with HLS = 0.
After adjustment for sex, age, educational level, and social class, participants with HLS = 2 had OR = 0.073 (95% CI 0.068–0.078).
Participants with HLS = 3 had OR = 0.074 (95% CI 0.069–0.079) compared to those with HLS = 0.
Workers with HLS = 1 did not show lower odds of high-to-very high technostress compared to HLS = 0.
Both HLS = 2 and HLS = 3 ORs were nearly identical, further supporting a threshold-like rather than linear association.
Results
The logistic regression model demonstrated excellent discrimination between high-to-very high technostress and lower technostress categories.
The final adjusted model achieved an AUC (area under the curve) of 0.902.
An AUC of 0.902 is generally considered 'excellent' discrimination in predictive modeling.
Covariates included in the model were sex, age, educational level, and social class in addition to the HLS.
Results
The association between the Healthy Lifestyle Score and technostress followed a threshold-like pattern rather than a progressive dose-response relationship.
Moving from HLS = 0 to HLS = 1 did not produce a meaningful reduction in odds of high-to-very high technostress.
A substantial reduction in odds appeared only at HLS = 2 and was not further reduced at HLS = 3.
The authors describe this as a 'threshold-like rather than progressive association.'
This pattern suggests that adopting at least two healthy behaviors may be necessary to achieve meaningful technostress reduction.
Results
Component-specific analyses indicated that the three healthy lifestyle behaviors comprising the HLS did not contribute equally to the association with technostress.
The three components of the HLS were: regular physical activity, high adherence to the Mediterranean diet, and non-smoking status, each worth one point.
Component-specific analyses indicated that 'the associations differed substantially across the behaviors comprising the score.'
The authors recommend interpreting the HLS 'as an unweighted behavioral count rather than as a measure of equivalent contributions from each component.'
No specific ORs for individual components were reported in the abstract.
Methods
This study examined technostress and healthy lifestyle behaviors in a large cross-sectional sample of 104,175 Spanish workers undergoing routine occupational health examinations.
Data were collected between January 2021 and December 2024.
Technostress was assessed using the Technostress Short Questionnaire (TCS-Short) and categorized as low, moderate, high, or very high.
The Healthy Lifestyle Score (HLS) ranged from 0 to 3, with one point assigned for each of: regular physical activity, high adherence to the Mediterranean diet, and non-smoking status.
Logistic regression models were used to estimate crude and adjusted odds ratios with 95% confidence intervals for high-to-very high technostress.
Background
Technostress has emerged as a major occupational health concern in increasingly digitalized workplaces, yet the influence of healthy lifestyle behaviors on technostress remains poorly understood.
The authors note that 'organizational and technological determinants of technostress have been widely investigated.'
The potential influence of healthy lifestyle behaviors on technostress was identified as a gap in the existing literature.
The study aimed to evaluate the association between a combined Healthy Lifestyle Score and technostress.
The study population was Spanish workers, and the setting was routine occupational health examinations.
What This Means
This research suggests that Spanish workers who maintain multiple healthy lifestyle habits — specifically not smoking, eating a Mediterranean-style diet, and exercising regularly — are far less likely to experience high levels of technostress (the psychological strain caused by using technology at work) than workers who follow few or none of these habits. In a study of over 104,000 workers, those who followed at least two of these three healthy behaviors had about a 93% lower likelihood of reporting high or very high technostress compared to workers who followed none of them. Notably, following just one healthy behavior did not appear to meaningfully reduce technostress risk — the benefit only appeared once workers adopted two or more healthy habits.
The study also found that the relationship between healthy lifestyle habits and technostress was not a smooth, gradual one. Instead, it appeared more like a threshold: workers needed to reach a certain level of healthy behavior (at least two out of three habits) before significant benefits were seen. Additionally, the three lifestyle behaviors did not contribute equally to the association — physical activity, diet, and smoking each played different roles in the relationship with technostress, though the abstract does not specify which contributed most.
This research suggests that workplace wellness programs targeting multiple lifestyle factors simultaneously — rather than focusing on a single behavior — may be especially effective at reducing technostress. Because this was a cross-sectional study (a snapshot in time rather than a long-term follow-up), it cannot prove that healthy lifestyle habits directly cause lower technostress; other unmeasured factors could play a role. However, the findings highlight an important and underexplored connection between how workers live outside of work and how they cope with technology-related stress at work.
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