TY  - EJOU
AU  - Jiang, Pei 
AU  - Shu, Ziyue 
AU  - Li, Shuqin 
AU  - Liu, Qianrong 
AU  - Wang, Weihua 

TI  - Longitudinal association between habitual mobile phone use and subjective well-being among university students: The chain mediating effect of self-management and learning burnout
T2  - Journal of Psychology in Africa

PY  - 2025
VL  - 35
IS  - 1
SN  - 1815-5626

AB  - This longitudinal study investigated how self-management and learning burnout influences the relationship between habitual mobile phone use and subjective well-being among first-year university students. A sample of 1172 Chinese university students participated in a two-wave survey, with data collected six months apart at two time points (T1, T2). The results of Pearson correlation revealed that higher habitual mobile phone use at T1 was associated with lower subjective well-being at T2. Self-management was associated with healthy phone use habits and higher subjective wellbeing. Learning burnout risk was higher with habitual phone usage. Lower self-management and learning burnout at T2 played a chain mediating role between habitual mobile phone use at T1 and subjective well-being at T2 so that subjective well-being was much lower that with either of the variables alone. Overall, these findings suggest that habitual mobile phone use is a reliable predictor of college student’s subjective well-being, by their self-management and level of learning burnout over time. This research highlights the long-term impact of habitual mobile phone use on students’ subjective well-being and provides valuable insights for developing effective interventions to support students well-being.
KW  - habitual mobile phone use; subjective well-being; self-management; learning burnout; university first-year students

DO  - 10.32604/jpa.2025.065777