Exercise identity, exercise behavior and mobile phone addiction: A cross-sectional mediation study with a sample of rural left-behind children in China

Abstract

To evaluate the relationships among exercise identity, exercise behavior and mobile phone addiction in 516 left-behind children in rural China (48.06% boys; Mage = 12.13 ± 1.95, range 8–16). Specifically, cross-sectional design was carried out to test the hypothesis that the association between rural left-behind children’ exercise identity and mobile phone addition would be fully mediated by their exercise behavior. The participants filled in self-reported instruments. The data was analyzed using structural equation modeling and decomposition of direct and indirect effects. Exercise identity and exercise behavior were significantly negatively correlated with left-behind children's mobile phone addiction (r = −0.486, −0.278, P < 0.01), and exercise identity was positively correlated with their exercise behavior (r = 0.229, P < 0.01); the direct effect of exercise identity on mobile phone addiction was −0.226 (95% CI: −0.363 ∼ −0.108), accounting for 68.9% of the total effect of −0.328, and its indirect effect was 0.102 (95% CI: −0.161∼−0.005), accounting for 31.1% of the total effect. These findings suggest that exercise identity may be an effective measure to reduce left-behind children's mobile phone addiction. It is suggested that school administrators and guardians should pay attention to improving left-behind children's exercise identity level in the education process.