Association of Exercise Frequency with Smartphone Addiction and Psychosocial Well-being among Undergraduate Medical Students: An Analytical Cross-sectional Study

Abstract

Background: Medical students experience psychological distress and  smart phone addiction along with prolonged study hours. Exercise behaviour is a modifiable but complex factor related to smartphone addiction, sleep and psychosocial well-being. Objective: To evaluate the association of exercise frequency with smartphone addiction, sleep and psychosocial parameters among undergraduate medical students. Methods: A descriptive, observational, analytical cross-sectional study was conducted among 380 undergraduate medical students, selected by simple random sampling. Data were collected using a pretested structured questionnaire, which had sections on sleep, self-esteem, hopelessness, self-belief, emotional disturbance, depression, anxiety, stress, social behaviour and smartphone addiction. Exercise frequency was categorised as daily, four to six days/week, two to three days/week, and one day/week or rarely. Welch's analysis of variance with Games–Howell post-hoc testing was used. Spearman correlation was used to assess monotonic associations. A secondary binary comparison used Welch's two-sample t-test. Results: Exercise frequency differed significantly across groups for self-esteem, emotional disturbance, depression, stress, smartphone addiction and sleep disturbance. Stress showed a weak inverse correlation (ρ=−0.129, P=0.012), whereas sleep disturbance showed a weak positive correlation (ρ=0.104, P=0.042) with exercise frequency. No significant monotonic correlation was observed between exercise frequency and smartphone addiction. Conclusion: Exercise behaviour was associated with multiple psychosocial and behavioural outcomes, but the direction and magnitude of associations varied according to the frequency and type of exercise.

Keywords: Exercise; Smartphone addiction; Medical students; Depression; Psychosocial well-being