When it comes to using technology at home, women tend to do more of the day-to-day online work for the family, creating an extra digital burden.

My phone pings and it's the school chat group reminding us that it's a dress-up day. I scramble to fashion an outfit together for our children to wear. I do this without thinking about it, before my partner has a chance to help.

This is a common occurrence in many households because despite men taking a more active role in parenting than in recent history, women still tend to be seen as household organizers.

It's now been well established that in heterosexual relationships, women also do more of the hidden labor – the anticipating, planning, and organizing of the tasks that help family life function. It creates a substantial mental workload at the intersection of cognitive and emotional labor. Less obvious is the fact that technology is exacerbating this, putting women at risk of digital overload and even burnout.

Women are more likely to be exposed to the double burden of digital communication in both work and family life – Yang Hu

Technology can help us be more productive in many areas of our lives. But at home, it is evident that technology is adding to women's already busy mental workloads. A recent cross-national study analyzed data from the European Social Survey of more than 6,600 parents from 29 countries who had at least one child and one living parent. It found that the mental load on women, especially mothers, is exacerbated by technology. There appears to be a gender division of labor when it comes to digital communication regarding work and family life. 

The research team looked at technology use among the respondents. Men tended to use technology most at work but women used technology both at work and at home. "We find that women are more likely to be exposed to the double burden of digital communication in both work and family life," says the lead author of the study Yang Hu from Lancaster University in the UK, who conducted the study alongside Yue Qian from the University of British Columbia in Canada. Women who worked from home also experienced more of this double burden.

It is an issue that has worsened as we conduct more of our lives online, and as working from home has become more common following the Covid-19 pandemic. Women are 1.6 times more likely than men to juggle dual-high digital communication both at work and at home, the researchers found.