ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Sport Psychology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1667868
This article is part of the Research TopicTowards a Psychophysiological Approach in Physical Activity, Exercise, and Sports-Volume VView all 15 articles
Effects of Physical Exercise on Mindfulness Level among Female College Students: The Mediating Effect of Mobile Phone Addiction
Provisionally accepted
- Huaqiao University, Quanzhou, China
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Background: This study explores the impact of physical exercise on female college students’ trait mindfulness levels and examines the mediating role of mobile phone addiction in this relationship. Methods: The empirical study employs stratified random cluster sampling. The Physical Activity Rating Scale-3 (PARS-3), Mindful Awareness Attention Scale (MAAS), and Mobile Phone Addiction Tendency Scale (MPATS) were used to conduct a questionnaire survey. The participants of the study were 554 female college students from 5 universities in Fujian Province, China. Results: The scores for physical exercise, trait mindfulness, and mobile phone addiction among female college students were 16.04 ± 15.92, 53.79 ± 11.45, and 47.93 ± 9.76, respectively. Physical exercise and trait mindfulness had a significant positive correlation (r=0.20, p<0.01), while physical exercise and mobile phone addiction had a significant negative correlation (r=-0.17, p<0.01). Also, a significant negative correlation was found between mobile phone addiction and trait mindfulness (r=-0.45, p<0.01). The structural equation model analysis showed that the direct effect of physical exercise on trait mindfulness was 0.071 (p < 0.01), and mobile phone addiction played a significant indirect mediating role in it, with the indirect effect being 0.044, accounting for 35.77% of the total effect. Conclusion: The findings indicate that physical exercise can enhance female college students’ trait mindfulness directly and indirectly by reducing mobile phone addiction. This implies the importance of promoting physical exercise and managing mobile phone use in universities, while combining mindfulness training with physical exercise may greatly benefit their comprehensive mental development. The cross-sectional design of this study can only reflect the co-occurrence of variables and cannot determine the causal direction. Using self-report scales, while accounting for potential social expectation biases and recall biases, future studies can further validate the conclusions through longitudinal tracking and multi-dimensional assessment.
Keywords: physical activity, Female college students, Mobile phone addiction, mindfulness, Women's Physical Activity Promotion
Received: 17 Jul 2025; Accepted: 28 Aug 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Li, Zheng, Lin, Li and HU. 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:
Jiayi Li, Huaqiao University, Quanzhou, China
Guopeng HU, Huaqiao University, Quanzhou, China
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