The relationship between smartphone addiction and academic burnout among physical education teacher students: a chain mediating of meaning in life and physical exercise.

OBJECTIVE: Based on an integrated perspective of self-determination theory, this study examined whether smartphone addiction is associated with academic burnout among physical education teacher students through the sequential mediation of meaning in life and physical exercise. METHODS: A cross-sectional design was adopted. Participants, who were physical education teacher students, were recruited using stratified sampling. Standardized scales were used to assess smartphone addiction, meaning in life, physical exercise, and academic burnout. After controlling for demographic variables such as gender and grade, a bias-corrected bootstrap method was applied to test the chain mediation effects. RESULTS: Correlation analyses showed a significant positive association between smartphone addiction and academic burnout (total effect β = 0.604, p < 0.001). The mediation analysis indicated that smartphone addiction was indirectly associated with academic burnout through three pathways: (1) the independent mediating pathway of meaning in life (β = 0.058, p < 0.001); (2) the independent mediating pathway of physical exercise (β = 0.183, p < 0.001); and (3) the chain mediating pathway through meaning in life and then physical exercise (β = 0.156, p < 0.001). The bootstrap confidence intervals for all indirect effects did not include zero. The total indirect effect accounted for 65.56% of the total effect, indicating statistical significance for each mediating pathway. CONCLUSION: The study found that smartphone addiction was not only directly and positively associated with academic burnout among physical education teacher students, but also indirectly associated through the chain mediation of meaning in life and physical exercise. The results reveal a sequential psychological-behavioral chain of "technology use behavior → psychological sense of meaning → physical activity pattern → academic adjustment problem," clarifying the sequential relationship between meaning in life and physical exercise in the association between smartphone addiction and academic burnout. Self-determination theory provides a comprehensive theoretical framework for understanding this chain mechanism, explaining different psychological stages from need satisfaction to meaning experience and from meaning experience to autonomous behavior.