A Bibliometric Analysis of Workplace Stress, Digital Dependency, and Digital Fatigue Research: Trends, Themes and Future Research Directions

Abstract

This study presents a bibliometric analysis of the literature on workplace stress, technostress, digital dependency and digital fatigue, with particular attention to Generation Z and Millennial employees in the information technology sector. Drawing on a curated corpus of 210 sources published between 1984 and 2026 (152 peer-reviewed journal articles, 33 books and edited volumes, 12 doctoral and master’s theses, 12 conference papers, and 1 book chapter), the review maps publication trends, source-type composition, dominant publication venues, prolific contributing authors, and the thematic structure of the field through keyword co-occurrence network analysis. Annual output rose from a single publication in 1984 to a peak of 22 sources in 2024; sources published from 2019 onward account for 125 of the 203 dated entries, or 61.6 percent of the dated corpus. A network of 51 keywords, each recurring in at least three sources, resolves into five thematic clusters: psychological and personal-life symptoms of overload; technostress creators and health impairment; organizational outcomes of technostress; digital fatigue and work design; and coping and disengagement behaviors. Overlaying the average publication year of each keyword onto the co-occurrence network indicates a temporal shift in research emphasis, from organisational-outcome variables such as turnover intention and work exhaustion, which were more prominent in the literature prior to 2015, toward emerging constructs such as digital fatigue, well-being, and techno-uncertainty, which have gained greater prominence in studies published after 2022. Despite this volume of activity, keyword-based thematic classification identifies only five of the 210 sources as directly addressing the Indian IT sector and only one as addressing AI-era technostress within the present corpus, leaving the comparison of digital dependency and digital fatigue between Generation Z and Millennial employees in the Indian IT sector largely unexamined.