SynthesisFrontiers in psychology2022
Effects of exercise and psychological interventions on smartphone addiction among university students: A systematic review.
Synthesis in Frontiers in psychology, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 24 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
24 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 46 citations in OpenAlex.
- Mental health in university students: an umbrella review grading the evidence for psychosocial interventions.BMJ mental health · 2026Pooled it
- The Impact of Different Sports on Reducing Mobile Phone Addiction: A Systematic Review and Network Meta-Analysis.Addiction biology · 2025Pooled it
- Traditional Social Sports Games and Mental Training for Smartphone Addiction and Psychological Distress in School-Aged Adolescents: Randomized Controlled Trial.JMIR mHealth and uHealth · 2026Trial
- The effectiveness of physical activity intervention on mobile phone addiction in college students: the chain mediating role of emotion regulation strategies and positive coping style.BMC public health · 2025Trial
- Trialing a simple mobile phone dependency intervention strategy among Chinese college students.Scientific reports · 2025Trial
- A sex-specific difference in smartphone addiction, physical activity level, and cognitive functions among university students.AIMS public health · 2026Article
- Physical activity motivation is inversely associated with anxiety: a cross-sectional serial mediation analysis involving smartphone addiction symptoms and sleep quality in medical undergraduates.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Article
- Smartphone Addiction Among Zimbabwean Undergraduate Students: A Prevalence and Cross-Cultural Validation of the Smartphone Addiction Scale-Short Version (SAS-SV).Addiction & health · 2026Article
- Forms of interventions for problematic usage of the internet: A scoping review.Journal of behavioral addictions · 2025Article
- One-year update on physical activity and smartphone addiction in university students: A systematic review of novel research.Preventive medicine reports · 2025Review
- The Brain in the Age of Smartphones and the Internet: The Possible Protective Role of Sport.Brain sciences · 2025Review
- Facial emotion based smartphone addiction detection and prevention using deep learning and video based learning.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- A chain mediating model of the impact of physical exercise on sleep quality.BMC public health · 2025Article
- The impact of physical exercise on mobile phone addiction among college students: a study based on Chinese universities.Frontiers in psychology · 2025Article
- Do regular exercise, gender, and age influence smartphone addiction? Analyzing screen time and smartphone deprivation symptoms.Frontiers in psychology · 2025Article
- Smartphone dependence and its influence on physical and mental health.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2025Review
- How Are Physical Activity and Mindfulness Associated with Psychological Symptoms Among Chinese University Students: The Independent and Joint Role.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Article
- A meta-review of screening and treatment of electronic "addictions".Clinical psychology review · 2024Review
- Could physical activity alleviate smartphone addiction in university students? A systematic literature review.Preventive medicine reports · 2024Review
- Relationship between depression, anxiety, stress and smartphone addiction in COVID-19 nursing students.Revista latino-americana de enfermagem · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
5 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Background and aims: Among the large number of studies on smartphone addiction, only a few randomized controlled trials on exercise and psychological interventions for smartphone addiction by university students have been published. This study aims to systematically investigate the impact of exercise and psychological interventions on smartphone addiction among university students. Methods: The PRISMA guidelines were adopted for this systematic literature review. Prominent academic databases such as Web of Science, PubMed, ProQuest, Cochrane Library, China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI) and PsycINFO were searched to find eligible studies published before Aug 2021. The overall quality of the articles was checked using the "QualSyst" tool by Kmet et al. Results: From among 600 papers, 23 met the inclusion criteria and were incorporated into our systematic review. All of the studies were randomized controlled trials. The following thematic areas emerged as a result of the content analysis: study selection and design, as well as study characteristics (participants, intervention, comparisons, and outcomes). Discussion and conclusion: The literature on exercise and psychological interventions for smartphone addiction is scarce. There is a need to introduce new interventions and to validate the effectiveness of combined interventions. Our findings suggest that exercise and psychological interventions may help to reduce smartphone addiction. This combination was more effective compare to exercise or psychological intervention on mental health and addiction among university students. Future research should combine exercise and psychological interventions, focusing on university students, especially females, who are vulnerable to smartphone addiction. Further studies should focus on the cross-section of neuropsychology, cognitive psychology, and sports science to provide combined interventions in physiological and psychological direction. Systematic review registration: https://www.crd.york.ac.uk/prospero, identifier: CRD42021278037.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.