Open Access

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

Pei Jiang¹, Ziyue Shu¹, Shuqin Li^1,*, Qianrong Liu², Weihua Wang¹

1 School of Educational Science, Hunan Normal University, Changsha, 410081, China
2 School of Psychological Science, The University of Western Australia, Perth, WA 6009, Australia

* Corresponding Author: Shuqin Li. Email:

Journal of Psychology in Africa 2025, 35(1), 127-133. https://doi.org/10.32604/jpa.2025.065777

Received 18 October 2024; Accepted 24 November 2024; Issue published 30 April 2025

Abstract

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.

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