Digital Environment and Caring Capacity: A Theoretical Framework on Digital Overexposure and Emotional Regulation in Caregivers of People with Intellectual Disabilities

Family caregivers of people with intellectual disabilities carry a psychological burden that the research literature has measured carefully but never fully mapped from the inside. This paper proposes a theoretical framework addressing a dimension that has received no systematic attention: how digital overexposure interacts with emotional regulation in this population during recovery time. Drawing on emotion regulation theory and attention economics, three mechanisms are identified through which digital platform use may erode rather than restore the caregiver's psychological resources. Deferred attentional depletion describes how the restorative failure of digital engagement surfaces not during use but in the hours that follow. Compression of tolerance for emotional ambiguity captures the gradual narrowing of capacity to sustain the affective complexity inherent in intellectual disability caregiving. The guilt-inducing relief paradox names a self-reinforcing cycle in which digital escape generates guilt that increases rather than alleviates psychological burden. Implications for clinical assessment, psychoeducational intervention, and quality of life outcomes are discussed.

Note: An Italian-language preprint of a related paper is deposited on Zenodo (DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.20375418). This manuscript has been submitted to the Journal of Applied Research in Intellectual Disabilities (JARID).