Our first starting point to analyze whether there are increases in technostress and work exhaustion due to the COVID-19 crisis. Our aim was to analyze SMC at work as a digital stressor. We investigated formal and informal SMC at work to analyze two previously recognized user patters that were potentially linked to well-being at work (Oksa et al., 2020). We expected the following.•H1: social media burden hypothesis: The impacts of the COVID-19 crisis on technostress and work exhaustion are strongest among those who are most active in communicating via social media at work during the crisis.•H2: well-prepared hypothesis: The impacts of the COVID-19 crisis on technostress and work exhaustion are weakest among those who were already active in communicating via social media at work before the crisis.
