European Legal Rights to Digital Disconnection and Psychosocial Implications

Jorge Piquero-Vieiro (), Asunción López-Arranz () and Adela Reig-Botella ()
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Jorge Piquero-Vieiro: University of A Coruña
Asunción López-Arranz: University Institute of Maritime Studies and EDaSS Research Group, University of A Coruña
Adela Reig-Botella: University of A Coruña

Chapter Chapter 5 in Human Resource Development for Sustainability and Social Responsibility, 2026, pp 53-61 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract Although technology and Internet access have made our lives, knowledge and communications easier, there are also negative aspects that eliminate the boundary between work time and rest. It is an unquestionable fact that a lack of adequate rest has a negative impact on our daily lives. For this reason, the working environment can ensure the health of workers. And in this context, the need to regulate the right to digital disconnection is becoming increasingly important, recognizing that workers should not connect to any professional digital tool (smartphone, internet, email, etc.) during rest and vacation periods. The excessive use of new technologies is causing the dividing line between the worker’s personal and work life to blur and the boundary between work time and rest time to disappear, generating a situation in which work invades everything and the worker ceases to have genuine and personal rest time. This situation would entail significant risks to workers’ health. In this context, the objective of this paper is to analyze labor regulations regarding digital disconnection in the current European legal system as a tool for occupational risk prevention. This paper concludes that such regulations are scarce and uneven across European Union Member States.

Keywords: Psychosocial risks; Digital disconnection; Labour law; Labour market digitization (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:prbchp:978-3-032-09683-8_5

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DOI: 10.1007/978-3-032-09683-8_5

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