Digital Burnout and Anxiety Among University Students: Roles of Maladaptive Cognitive Emotion Regulation and Self-Regulated Learning Strategies

Background: As digital technologies permeate every corner of academic life, post-secondary students find themselves navigating an escalating tide of screen-mediated demands that blur boundaries between study, social connection, and rest. This cross-sectional investigation examined how digital burnout (operationalized through its emotional-exhaustion core) relates to anxiety among 539 undergraduates, while exploring the potentially buffering roles of self-regulated learning strategies and the amplifying effects of maladaptive cognitive emotion regulation. Methods: Structural equation modeling was leveraged to test a path model combining a mediation test with a separate moderation test of the direct statistical association between digital burnout and anxiety, assembling previously isolated constructs into a unified framework. Results: The analyses revealed that digital burnout was positively associated with anxiety, while self-regulated learning strategies showed a robust negative association with anxiety, independent of burnout levels. Contrary to expectations, self-regulated learning did not significantly mediate the burnout-anxiety relationship; likewise, maladaptive cognitive emotion regulation did not significantly moderate this association. Conclusions: These findings position digital burnout as a meaningful psychological strain in contemporary higher education, one whose statistical connection with anxiety appears to operate through direct paths rather than through detected changes in self-regulatory capacities. The evidence signals a need for institutions to recognize digital exhaustion as a legitimate mental health concern and to cultivate students’ self-regulated learning skills, which were negatively related to anxiety in this sample.