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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Psychol.

Sec. Sport Psychology

Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1671836

This article is part of the Research TopicMotivations For Physical Activity - Volume IVView all 20 articles

The Impact of Regular Physical Exercise on Mobile Phone Addiction Tendency Among Chinese College Students: The Mediating Role of Trait Boredom and the Moderating Role of Self-control

Provisionally accepted
  • 1Physical Education College, Shanghai University, Shanghai, China
  • 2Shanghai University, Shanghai, China
  • 3tyliubing@163.com, Shanghai University, Shanghai, China

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

This study explores the relationship between regular physical exercise and mobile phone addiction tendency among college students, with a focus on the mediating role of trait boredom and the moderating role of self-control. A total of 560 students from three universities in Shanghai were surveyed using the Revised Physical Activity Rating Scale, the Exercise Stage Scale, the Trait Boredom Scale, the Brief Self-control Scale, and the College Students' Mobile Phone Addiction Tendency Scale. The results indicate that: (1) regular physical exercise is significantly negatively correlated with mobile phone addiction tendency, suggesting that students who engage in more regular physical exercise exhibit lower levels of mobile phone addiction tendency; (2) trait boredom mediates the relationship between regular physical exercise and mobile phone addiction tendency; (3) self-control moderates the effect of trait boredom on mobile phone addiction tendency, such that higher levels of self-control weaken the positive association between trait boredom and mobile phone addiction tendency, whereas lower levels of self-control strengthen this association; (4) the moderating effect of self-control on the direct relationship between regular physical exercise and mobile phone addiction tendency is not significant. This study reveals the underlying mechanisms through which regular physical exercise affects mobile phone addiction tendency and provides theoretical and practical implications for the design of intervention strategies and the cultivation of self-control among college students.

Keywords: Regular physical exercise, Mobile phone addiction tendency, Trait boredom, Self-Control, college students

Received: 23 Jul 2025; Accepted: 06 Oct 2025.

Copyright: © 2025 Qi, Zhou, Li and Liu. 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:
Jingjing Li, st08lijingjing@126.com
Bing Liu, tyliubing@163.com

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