The Digital Tug-of-War: Self-Regulated Learning as a Buffer against Digital Distractions for University Students in Pakistan

Higher education Digital transformation has become a universal problem: how to keep students focused in the face of overwhelming digital distractions. This paper explores the perceived levels of Self-Regulated Learning (SRL), Digital Distractions (DD), and Academic Performance (AP) in the poorly studied setting of Pakistani universities. The survey was a descriptive quantitative survey conducted on a sample of undergraduate students at the University of Sargodha, Pakistan, where 297 valid responses were analyzed. Although students have reported high rates of digital distractions (e.g., more than 80 per cent of them admitted using social media when studying), their levels of SRL use (Means 3.49-3.92), and academic performance (Means 3.69-3.94 were also moderately high. These results indicate that SRL strategies could be utilized as an imperative buffer because they allow students to continue to maintain their academic performance despite the ubiquitous distractions of digital devices. The research ends with some practical suggestions that can be undertaken to include SRL training in educational curricula to promote academic resilience in technology-driven learning experiences.