The COVID-19 crisis has been a major natural experiment and has led to increases in remote working and intensive use of social media applications designed to facilitate work. This was the first study to investigate longitudinally the impacts of the COVID-19 crisis on the working population. We were able to demonstrate that technostress increased during the crisis and that excess use of social media at work strains people. However, this effect is not shown on those people who were already accustomed to using social media at work. Those used to digital technologies and remote working adjusted better to the COVID-19 crisis than others did. The COVID-19 crisis has provided an important lesson for many organizations on the general variance of skills in using digital technologies.
