Development and Validation of a Brief Digital Fatigue Scale for University Students

Abstract

The rise of screen-mediated university environments has brought to light a growing problem: digital fatigue, understood as cognitive, visual, social, and motivational exhaustion resulting from the intensive use of technology. However, in Latin America and the Caribbean, and specifically in Peru, there is a lack of culturally contextualized instruments and strategies to measure this emerging phenomenon and detect it early to inform pedagogical decisions. To address this recurring structural gap, the objective of this study was to develop and validate a brief and robust digital fatigue scale for higher education students. The method used was exploratory and confirmatory quantitative factor analysis of 502 college students; at the same time, invariance and reliability tests were conducted, resulting in a brief 20-item scale comprising five concurrent and correlating dimensions: visual fatigue, social fatigue, digital disengagement, cognitive fatigue, and somatic fatigue. The results showed a model with excellent fit (CFI = 0.962 and RMSEA = 0.066) and typical invariance by gender and academic year. The main practical implication is that educators and researchers now have a brief and psychometrically robust tool to identify specific profiles of digital burnout, design tailored support, and promote digital well-being policies among higher education students.