ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychiatry
Sec. Addictive Disorders
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2025.1569340
This article is part of the Research TopicBody Sensor Networks, Mobile Application Monitoring and Prescription Digital Therapeutics for Personalized Mental Health and Substance Use Management and TreatmentView all articles
How Mobile Phone Addiction Leads to College Students' Learning Burnout: The Role of Depression as a Mediator and Fear of Missing Out as a Moderator
Provisionally accepted
- 1Ningbo City College of Vocational Technology, Ningbo, Zhejiang Province, China
- 2Xiamen University, Xiamen, China
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Background: With the widespread use of smartphones, mobile phone addiction is becoming increasingly common among college students, which has a negative impact on their learning. This study aims to explore how mobile phone addiction leads to college students' learning burnout, with a focus on the mediating role of depression and the moderating role of FOMO (Fear of Missing Out).Methods: Convenient sampling was used to collect 1862 valid questionnaires from over 10 universities in China. A moderated mediation model was constructed to analyze the relationship and mechanism among mobile phone addiction, learning burnout, depression and FOMO through structural equation modeling.(1) Mobile phone addiction has a significant positive impact on college students' learning burnout (β=0.4767, p < 0.001); (2) Depression plays a partial mediating role between mobile phone addiction and learning burnout (95% CI= [0.0706,0.1145]), with the mediating effect accountingthe mediating effect accounts for 19.34% of the total effect; (3) FOMO moderates the relationship between depression and learning burnout. Specifically, depression has a stronger impact on learning burnout among college students with low FOMO.This study reveals the mechanism of mobile phone addiction on college students' learning burnout, and confirms the mediating role of depression and the moderating role of FOMO, . By integrating Self-Determination Theory, we further explain the specific mechanisms of FOMO's moderating role. This offers a which provides a new perspective for understanding the impact of mobile phone addiction on college students' learning burnout. It, and also provides a theoretical basis for colleges and universities to carry out mental health education and intervention.
Keywords: Mobile phone addiction, learning burnout, Depression, Fear of missing out, college students
Received: 31 Jan 2025; Accepted: 09 May 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Song, Zhu, Yang, Chang and Ni. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Wenhao Chang, Xiamen University, Xiamen, China
Jianchao Ni, Xiamen University, Xiamen, China
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