The current study aims to validate and apply an instrument to assess the relationship between communication overload, social overload, technostress, exhaustion and academic performance. We performed a cross-sectional, analytical study of 2286 university medical students to assess the influence of technostress as a mediator of social media overload, communication overload and mental exhaustion and its detrimental effect on the academic performance of university students in Peru during the COVID-19 pandemic. The research model was validated using partial least square structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) to establish the influence of variables on the model. Communication and social overload were found to positively influence technostress by correlations of 0.284 and 0.557, respectively. Technostress positively influenced exhaustion by 0.898, while exhaustion negatively influenced academic performance by-0.439. Bootstrapping demonstrated that the path coefficients of the research model were statistically significant. The research outcomes may help university managers understand students’ technostress and develop strategies to improve the balanced use of technology for their daily academic activities.