When stress meets the feed: algorithmic curation, digital stress relief, and academic amotivation in the attention economy

Algorithmically curated feeds have become a default layer of everyday life, offering rapid affect regulation under academic pressure while also reshaping attention and self-regulation. Moving beyond the generic “screen time” debate, this study examines a socio-technical pathway in which perceived pressure uncertainty is associated with academic amotivation through immersive escapism and self-regulatory fatigue. We surveyed 518 university students in China and measured pressure uncertainty, immersive escapism, self-regulatory fatigue, and academic amotivation. Using confirmatory factor analysis and latent structural equation modeling with ordinal indicators, while controlling demographics and entertainment-focused scrolling time, we found that pressure uncertainty was positively associated with immersive escapism. Immersive escapism, in turn, was positively associated with self-regulatory fatigue, which was associated with higher academic amotivation. Competing path models were more consistent with the hypothesized ordering than with alternative specifications. These findings suggest that platform-shaped digital relief may be linked to a depletion-oriented coping loop with educational consequences, pointing to intervention leverage points that are more actionable than broad calls to simply “use less.” We discuss implications for higher education (digital wellbeing support, self-regulation scaffolding, and algorithm-related digital literacy) and for platform design and accountability (greater user control, transparency, and pacing mechanisms that may interrupt maladaptive loops).