The emotional experience of internet shutdown may increase psychological distress and contribute to maladaptive responses. This study aimed to develop and psychometrically evaluate the Emotional Experience of Internet Shutdown Scale (EEISS) in Iranian university students during the 2025–2026 academic year. In terms of purpose, the research is applied, and methodologically it follows a correlational–psychometric design. Using an applied correlational-psychometric design, 420 students from Payame Noor University of Yazd were recruited through convenience sampling. Data were collected using the researcher-developed EEISS, the Wartime Anxiety Scale (Shomali & Barkhordari, 2025) to assess convergent validity, and Snyder’s Hope Scale to examine divergent validity. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses, together with Pearson correlations, were conducted in SPSS 26 and AMOS 24. EFA showed that the EEISS consists of 10 items loading on three latent factors, jointly accounting for 80.967% of the total variance. CFA further supported the satisfactory fit of the three-factor model (RMSEA = 0.043, CFI = 0.991, GFI = 0.976). Convergent validity was evidenced by a positive, significant correlation with war anxiety (r = 0.275), whereas divergent validity was supported by a negative, significant correlation with hope (r = −0.331). The overall reliability of the scale, as indicated by Cronbach’s alpha (α = 0.875), reflected desirable internal consistency. Overall, these findings suggest that the EEISS possesses sound psychometric properties and can be employed as a valid and reliable instrument for the targeted assessment of the emotional experience of internet shutdown among university students.