Digital Burnout Among Early-Year University Students: A Narrative Review of Concepts, Correlates, and Coping Strategies

Background: Due to rapid digitalization, there is a complete change in the teaching and learning strategies. Even though digitalization provides flexibility and accessibility to learning but long-term digital engagement has led to growing concerns about digital burnout and emotional cognitive and physical exhaustion especially in early year university students. This review aims to map the available evidence on digital burnout among early-year university students. The aim of this review is to compile the recent research on the concepts, associated factors, consequences and gaps in literature on digital burnout among early year university students. Methods: A thorough search was done using PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science, Embase, and Google Scholar to find studies published between January 2010 and October 2025 on digital burnout. All review and empirical works that addressed digital fatigue, technostress, and burnout in higher education were included. Synthesis of literature: Several studies point out that prolonged digital exposure caused emotional exhaustion decreased motivation and cognitive fatigue. These features were categorized as indicators of digital burnout. Early year university students are at a high risk of digital burnout mainly because of their limited coping mechanisms difficulties in managing time and adjusting to digital learning environments. These students are suddenly exposed to high academic workload and social isolation which leads to overuse of screens. These can lead to various implications like decreased academic engagement, psychological distress, and impaired concentration. There is mention of coping mechanisms in several studies that include time management, digital detoxes, mindfulness, and institutional support through counselling and hybrid learning programs. Conclusion: In higher education, digital burnout is an increasingly prevalent issue. But this area needs to be further explored. To improve resilience, measures need to be taken at various levels including organization, family, peers and self. Universities should include more human factors, provide self-regulation training, and education on digital well-being in first-year orientation programs. To better elucidate causative factors and evaluate the effectiveness of preventive measures, future cross-cultural, discipline-specific studies need to be conducted.