Digital Dependency and Academic Identity Among Postgraduate Students in the Era of Generative AI

Generative artificial intelligence has become embedded in everyday university life, often faster than institutional guidance has developed. This qualitative hermeneutic phenomenological study examined how postgraduate students experienced the boundary between generative-AI assistance and digital dependency, and how these experiences related to academic identity. In-depth, semi-structured interviews were conducted with eleven postgraduate students (five males and six females) at a public university in Saudi Arabia, selected through maximum-variation purposive sampling. Interviews were audio-recorded, transcribed verbatim, and returned to participants for verification. Analysis followed Van Manen’s holistic, selective, and detailed approaches to phenomenological reflection. Two themes captured the experience: negotiating the boundary of digital dependency, and academic identity between agency and dependence. Rather than locating dependency in frequency of use, participants located it in the recurring transfer of substantive ideation, judgment, and authorship to the tool. Verification and the ability to explain and defend the final work helped preserve epistemic agency, whereas time pressure sometimes shifted practice toward substitution. Within this sample, strategic use as a coach, critic, or organizer supported confidence and skill development; extensive delegation was associated in participants’ accounts with diminished ownership, guilt, and concealment-oriented assessment practices. The findings offer a provisional, sample-grounded account of digital dependency and suggest that perceived ambiguity in institutional expectations may make concealment more salient, without establishing a causal relationship.