Across South Africa, countless people will spend Christmas Eve juggling work messages between dinner courses, replying to Whatsapp’s while wrapping gifts, or checking emails before their families open presents the next morning. It is a familiar scene that perfectly captures how blurred the line between work and rest has become.
If this scenario resonates, your organisation isn’t alone, but it is contributing to a crisis that’s reaching breaking point. Recent research reveals that 82% of employees are at risk of burnout in 2025, marking a significant escalation from previous years. In South Africa and globally, nearly three in five workers are facing moderate to high burnout, with mental and emotional stress cited as the primary culprit by 63% of respondents.
December, traditionally a time for rest and renewal, has instead become a pressure cooker of digital overload. The festive season amplifies everything: more spending, more socialising, more expectations and critically, more screen time. Rather than offering respite, the holiday period now extends our always-on culture into our period of rest. This in turn creates a downward burnout spiral as we enter the new year in an increasingly frazzled state.
The neuroscience of digital exhaustion
Understanding why digital detox matters requires looking at what’s happening in our brains. The average person makes around 300 distinct scrolling actions per day, with each swipe potentially triggering a dopamine response. Social media platforms and workplace communication tools are engineered to keep us engaged, exploiting our brain’s reward system.
In South Africa, people spend an average of three hours and forty one minutes scrolling through social media daily. Even more concerning is the phenomenon of “doomscrolling”, which is excessively scrolling through social media. While this behaviour activates dopamine release in the brain, creating a feedback loop that keeps us scrolling, it simultaneously fuels depression, anxiety and mental fatigue. We’re caught in a neurological trap: seeking the pleasure response while absorbing content that depletes us. When that is combined with office burnout, it creates a perfect breeding ground for fatigue, exhaustion and poor mental health outcomes.
For employees already navigating year-end deadlines, performance reviews, and personal festive obligations, this constant digital engagement becomes unsustainable. The brain never gets the downtime it needs to process, restore, and prepare for the year ahead.
The business case for disconnection
Forward-thinking organisations are beginning to recognise that employees who are genuinely able to unplug during the holidays return in January with improved focus, creativity, and productivity. They sleep better, experience less anxiety, and bring renewed energy to their roles.
Teams that remain tethered to their devices throughout December start the new year already depleted. The cost manifests in higher turnover, increased sick leave, diminished innovation, and reduced organisational performance throughout Q1 and beyond.
Practical interventions that work:
Companies can create structures that make disconnection both possible and acceptable:
Establish clear email-free windows: Designate specific days during the holiday period as completely communication-free. No emails, no Slack, no “quick check-ins.” Make this a company-wide policy, not an individual choice.
Model behaviour from the top: Leadership must visibly disconnect. When executives send emails at midnight on Boxing Day, they signal that availability is expected regardless of official policy. Leaders should schedule emails to send during working hours in the new year rather than hitting send during their own off-hours.
Set explicit expectations about availability: Remove ambiguity. Tell employees directly: “You are not expected to check or respond to messages between 20 December and 3 January.” Then honour that commitment by not contacting them.
Create transition protocols: Ensure adequate handovers are completed before the break so no one feels they’re abandoning urgent matters. This removes the anxiety that drives people to check in “just in case.”
Encourage genuine rest. Share resources on digital wellbeing. Remind teams that rest isn’t just physical, it’s cognitive and emotional. Suggest practical steps like removing work apps from phones temporarily, setting devices to grayscale mode to reduce dopamine triggers, or establishing daily phone-free hours.
Beyond December: Building a Culture of Digital Health
At YuLife, we believe wellbeing is a year-round commitment. Our approach recognises that employee health encompasses multiple dimensions including physical, mental, and digital. Each affects the other. You cannot have genuinely healthy, engaged employees if they’re chronically overstimulated, sleep-deprived from late-night scrolling, and unable to disconnect from work demands.
The festive season offers a natural inflection point to reset workplace norms around technology. The organisations that seize this opportunity, actively protect their people’s ability to unplug, rest, and reconnect with what matters beyond screens will enter 2026 with teams that are not just rested, but genuinely restored and productive.
In a hyper-connected world where being “on” has become the default, intentional disconnection is an act of wellbeing. It’s time companies recognised this—and made it possible.
For more information on building holistic wellbeing programmes that support your team’s financial, mental, physical, and digital health, visit yulife.com
