Digitally Drained: Reviving Gen Z Student Engagement in the Face of Technostress

Abstract

The study investigates how Generation Z students' participation in private colleges in the Delhi NCR region of India is affected by technostress. Students who primarily rely on technology for their education are particularly sensitive to technostress due to the growing usage of information and communication technology (ICT) in academic activities. Students studying engineering and non-engineering completed a questionnaire that was used to gather data from 467 respondents between the ages of 18 and 23. The study used the 20-item Heilporn et al. (2020) scale to assess student participation in terms of behavioral, social, and emotional elements and the 21-item Tarafdar et al. (2007) scale to measure technostress. Significant variations in technostress levels according to gender, age, and academic discipline were found via statistical analysis. Higher levels of technostress were seen in female students, younger students (18–20 years old), and non-engineering students. Technostress and student involvement were found to be positively correlated by regression analysis, with behavioral engagement being most affected (variation of 21.6%). The study emphasizes the necessity of focused interventions to support students in managing their technology-related stress and continuing their academic participation. Educators and institutions' primary focus should be creating strategies to mitigate the harmful effects of technostress, particularly for vulnerable groups such as women, younger students, and students pursuing degrees other than engineering. These results add to the expanding body of research on technostress and highlight how crucial it is to address this problem in order to improve student engagement in the digital age.