In 1964, at the New York World's Fair, a video call seemed like the most reasonable preview of paradise: talking face to face without traveling, closing deals without moving, seeing family without trains or schedules. The "Picturephone" booth condensed that promise of modernity into a wonderfully naive scene. It did not fail because it was wrong about the future; it failed because it confused novelty with relief. Years later, that system became a commercial oddity. And it became clear that seeing more did not mean living better. That old lesson, so little remembered, is useful again today, when the screen is no longer a tool but a constant in our lives.
Digital fatigue does not present itself as a tragedy, but rather installs itself subtly, like a habit. It begins when someone checks their email before getting up, continues when the morning breaks into messages, meetings, and notifications; and ends (if it really does) with a glance at the phone just before sleeping, for a preview of tomorrow's tasks. We should not be concerned about the fact of using technology; alarms should go off for having accepted a poor architecture of time. The WHO and the ILO have long been saying that excessive workloads, lack of control, and psychosocial risks deteriorate mental health. Technology, when built on that ground, does not correct it; on the contrary, it amplifies it.
In Microsoft's "Work Trend Index Special Report," data is mentioned that represents almost a caricature of our normality: 117 emails daily, 153 Teams messages per day, and an interruption every two minutes during core working hours. This is compounded by meetings after eight in the evening, more than fifty messages outside of regular hours, and a widespread feeling of chaotic and fragmented work. The result does not always take the classic form of burnout; sometimes it resembles a constant irritation, an inability to concentrate, the feeling of having worked all day without finishing anything, that strange fatigue that comes with a full head but the impression of not having truly thought about anything.
And the signs of digital fatigue tend to be quite concrete: poorer sleep, difficulty maintaining attention, a compulsive need to check messages, social fatigue after video calls, domestic irritability, a sense of permanent disorder, and a productivity that we could describe as theatrical, very visible but shallow. The OECD research on childhood and adolescence, "How’s Life for Children in the Digital Age?" adds another disturbing clue: problematic use of networks and screens is associated with poorer sleep, anxiety, conflicts at home, and, in the most vulnerable cases, with the use of digital as an emotional escape.
It is evident that the family perceives it before the reports. Dinner in silence, and everyone checking their "to-dos" on their phones; the child who sleeps worse because the screen accompanies him to bed; the teenager who doesn't put down the mobile because it is where he escapes from what happens in the physical world; the mother or father who, by being "available" for work, is no longer available for anyone or anything else. The OECD warns that a significant portion of adolescents lives in almost constant connection, that young people and adolescents spend more time on social media and report more problematic use, and that family conflicts due to this use are part of the picture. Even in early childhood, they have discovered that removing screens an hour before sleep improves some indicators of rest. Digital fatigue, therefore, is not just an office issue, but it is affecting schools and homes.
Although in Mexico there is undoubtedly an unequal and visible experience between rural and urban areas, with the silent exclusion of those who do not even have sufficient, continuous, or competent access to that ecosystem, the country is not immune to this situation. According to INEGI, more than 70% of workers in Mexico use computers or digital devices as part of their work activities, which implies prolonged exposure to screens and digital tools, especially in administrative, financial, and service sectors; for its part, the Internet Association MX in its "20th Study on Internet User Habits in Mexico 2024" states that more than 60 million Mexicans spend at least 7 hours a day on the internet, and even 39% of users are connected for 9 hours or more daily.
Contrary to what one might imagine, the smartest trend that is growing to address this problem is not hyperautomation without criteria to reduce human exposure, but corporate digital minimalism. It does not mean going back to paper or romanticizing analog disconnection; it means understanding that technological complexity is also an operational cost. There is data to support this: when meetings are substantially reduced, productivity and satisfaction improve; and the video call experience is less exhausting when encounters are brief, small, and to the point. Mexico also recognizes in NOM-037 the right to disconnection in teleworking schemes. The problem is that many organizations continue to treat these limits as cosmetic gestures, not as serious work design.
For a small or medium-sized enterprise (SME), this discussion is even more practical. In Latin America, where SMEs make up almost the entire business fabric, simplicity is not an aesthetic virtue, but a survival strategy. An SME does not need twelve platforms, thirty notifications, and a culture of infinite availability to seem modern. It needs clear rules about when to respond and when not to, which channel serves what purpose, which meetings truly deserve to exist, which processes should be asynchronous, and what basic skills are lacking before purchasing the next tool. Mature digital transformation is not the one that adds layers, but the one that eliminates friction.
Perhaps the right question is not whether technology is making us more productive; maybe it is whether it is teaching us to work and live with less digital noise. For decades, we sold each advancement as a promise of liberation: more information, more speed, more connection. Today we are beginning to discover that, without limits, all of that also means less attention, less rest, and less presence. The solution does not lie in demonizing the digital, but in reorganizing it. Simplifying is a technical decision, but it has also become an ethical decision. And perhaps, at this moment, it is the most sensible form of modernity we have at hand.