Digital Fatigue and Its Association With Academic Resilience and Psychological Well-Being Among Undergraduate University Students

Abstract

Background: Digital Technologies are pervasive in higher education leading to concerns about digital fatigue and its potential impacts on students' psychological and academic adaptation.

Aim: To measure the digital fatigue amongst students in University of Kirkuk and how it correlates with academic resilience and psychological well-being of students of the university.

Methods: The current study is descriptive cross-sectional that was conducted on 250 undergraduate students from the University of Kirkuk in Iraq using stratified random sampling method between January 15 and June 25, 2024. Sociodemographic data were obtained with measures, an adapted Zoom Exhaustion and Fatigue Scale (ZEF), the Academic Resilience Scale (ARS-30), and the Psychological Well-Being Scale (PWB) by Ryff. Descriptive statistics, Pearson's correlation coefficient and simple linear regression were used for data analysis, and a value of p<0.05 was considered significant.

Results: More than half of participants (58.0%) said that they use the screen for more than 6 hours a day, the main academic device being the smartphones (59.6%). Digital fatigue had weak, but statistically significant, negative correlation with academic resilience (r=-.153,p=.015) and psychological well-being (r=-.153,p=.016), explaining 2.3% of the variance in each outcome (R^2=.023). On the other hand, academic resilience was strongly correlated with psychological well-being (r=.625, p<.001).

Conclusion and Recommendations: Digital fatigue was significantly related with decreased academic resilience and psychological wellbeing, while increased academic resilience was significantly related with increased psychological wellbeing. To embed “digital healthy use practices” and academic resilience training into students' support programs in universities.