Relationship between university students' physical activity and mobile phone dependence: Mediating effect of subjective well-being and moderating effect of psychological capital

The relationship between nighttime exercise and problematic smartphone use before sleep and associated health issues: a cross-sectional study

OBJECTIVE

Physical exercise has the potential to mitigate addictive behaviors and relevant health issues. However, the nighttime exercise has not been studied regarding this research topic. This study aims to explore the association between nocturnal physical exercise and problematic smartphone use before sleep, as well as related health issues.

METHODS

To explore the association between nighttime physical exercise and problematic smartphone use before sleep as well as related health issues, we conducted a cross-sectional survey among 1,334 college students. Their daily exercise behaviors (including timeframe, rationale, frequency, and duration), smartphone use before sleep, sleep quality, smartphone addiction, anxiety, and depression were measured by questionnaires. The associations were assessed using generalized linear models.

RESULTS

Our findings indicate that nearly 70% of participants chose to perform exercise at nighttime. Among these individuals who exercised at nighttime, the frequency and duration of nighttime exercise were significantly associated with decreased probabilities of smartphone use before sleep. Additionally, the frequency and duration of nighttime exercise were associated with lower levels of smartphone addiction and anxiety disorders.

CONCLUSION

Nighttime Exercise behaviors can effectively reduce sleep delays caused by problematic smartphone use before bedtime. These findings contribute to understanding the potential effects of nighttime exercise on problematic smartphone use and relevant health issues. Future research should employ more precise methodologies to examine these associations.

Leisure experience and mobile phone addiction: Evidence from Chinese adolescents

Background

During the Covid-19 pandemic, online learning became the mainstream because of many restrictions on interpersonal relationships. Children spent more and more time using mobile phones, which also aroused public concern.In past research on the prevention of problematic mobile phone use, it was easy to neglect meaningful part of leisure. Hence, based on Davis's cognitive-behavioral model, this study was designed to verify how leisure experience influences mobile phone addiction through maladaptive cognition, which received little attention before.

Methods

By convenient sampling method, it involved a sample of 1007 middle school students recruited from Northern China. We used adolescent leisure experience questionnaire, maladaptive cognition scale and mobile phone addiction scale to measure adolescents' leisure experience, maladaptive cognition and mobile phone addiction respectively.

Results

The findings revealed that leisure experience was negatively correlated with maladaptive cognition (r = -0.21, p < 0.01) and mobile phone addiction (r = -0.20, p < 0.01) respectively. Maladaptive cognition was positively correlated with mobile phone addiction (r = 0.51, p < 0.01). Given gender, age and family economic conditions, the negative predictive effect of leisure experience on mobile phone addiction was significant (β = -0.18，p < 0.001). Besides, the process by which leisure experience predicted mobile phone addiction through maladaptive cognition was significant, indirect effect = -0.10, SE = 0.02, 95 % CI = [-0.13, -0.07].

Conclusions

Adolescents' great leisure experience has a positive impact on mobile phone addiction, which can be achieved by reducing maladaptive cognition. Therefore，it is significant to improve their leisure experience and guide them to perceive their irrational beliefs in leisure and rethink offline leisure and real life from more positive views.

The Longitudinal Mediating Effect of Smartphone Dependency on the Relationship between Exercise Time and Subjective Happiness in Adolescents

The phenomenon of adolescents engaging in less physical activity as they age raises several concerns. Among these, we hypothesized that this trend may negatively impact their mental health and smartphone dependency. Thus, the aim of this study was to longitudinally examine the mediating effect of smartphone dependency in the relationship between adolescents' exercise time and subjective well-being. For analysis, publicly available data from the 2018 Korean Children and Youth Panel Survey were utilized, with a total of 2,242 participants' data included in the analysis. Latent growth modeling results revealed a significant linear decrease in adolescents' exercise time and subjective well-being each year, while smartphone dependency exhibited an increasing trend. Furthermore, the significance tests of indirect effects indicated that the mediating effect of the changing trend in smartphone dependency between the changing trends in exercise time and subjective happiness in adolescents was statistically significant. These findings suggest that as grade levels increase, reducing exercise time can lead to higher smartphone dependency among adolescents, ultimately resulting in decreased subjective well-being.