How do physical activity and social media use predict the study wellbeing profile of comprehensive school students?

Abstract

Students' study wellbeing plays a crucial role in protecting against social and academic challenges, both within and outside school. However, little is known about how the extent of physical activity and social media use affects study wellbeing. To explore this, we identified profiles of study engagement and burnout among Finnish primary school students (n = 345, age 11), and lower secondary school students (n = 447, age 14). Using latent profile analysis, we identified five study wellbeing profiles: three showing a negative association between engagement and burnout—engaged, burned-out, and average—and two bivariate profiles—exhausted-inadequacy and cynical. Students reported engaging in physical activity for at least one hour on most days, with the engaged profile showing significantly higher activity than the average profile, while the remaining profiles showed broadly similar levels. In contrast, clear differences emerged in social media use: students in the burned-out profile reported the highest use and those in the engaged profile the lowest, with other profiles falling in between. Primary school students were more likely to belong to beneficial profiles compared to lower secondary school students. Moreover, girls were more often represented in the profiles with exhausted-inadequacy and burned-out profiles, while boys were overrepresented in the cynical profile. Last, class-level clustering revealed that profiles were not evenly distributed across classes, indicating the influence of contextual factors on students' study wellbeing. The findings offer valuable insights for designing targeted interventions aimed at promoting student study engagement and preventing study burnout.