What is user engagement? revisited: A comprehensive review of the concept of user engagement from 2010 to 2025. An Annual Review of Information Science and Technology (ARIST) paper

User engagement (UE) has long been proposed as a holistic framework for understanding user‐technology interactions and a mediator for outcomes of digital technology use, such as learning, health behavior change, information acquisition, and social connectivity. This literature review, encompassing 367 multidisciplinary, empirical journal and conference papers, investigated how UE was conceptualized between 2010 and 2025 by examining authors' implicit and explicit definitions of UE, use of theoretical frameworks, and methods for operationalizing the concept. Among the key findings, UE was consistently conceptualized as behavior, affect, cognition, social interaction, and future intention. Yet, behavioral approaches were dominant; limited attention was placed on cognitive engagement. In addition, the use of theoretical frameworks and explicit definitions in the studies was lacking, and UE was frequently treated as the outcome variable in the research, rather than as a mediator for other outcomes. The implications of these results are discussed with respect to a digital UE research agenda. Ultimately, I argue that the concept of UE has devolved through increased emphasis on behavioral engagement, and that we must rethink behavioral, cognitive, and affective engagement to be more aligned with user goals and agency.