Medical students are at high risk of psychological subhealth under heavy stress with increasing screen time. This study aimed to explore the association between screen time and depressive symptoms and determine empathy as a mediating factor. In this cross-sectional study, a total of 945 medical students were surveyed, and 924 medical students were ultimately included after standard exclusion criteria. They reported their daily screen time and completed the Chinese version of the Jefferson Scale of Empathy-Student Version (JSE-S) and the Self-Rating Depression Scale (SDS). t tests and analysis of variance showed a significant difference in empathy and depressive symptoms by sex, stage, and screen time. The correlation analysis revealed that both affective and cognitive empathy have inverse associations with depressive symptoms. The mediation model confirmed that cognitive empathy played a positive mediating role between screen time and depressive symptoms, reducing the impact of screen time on depressive symptoms. Our study may add empirical evidence to prevent and intervene in depressive symptoms. These findings call for considering controlling screen time and enhancing cognitive empathy as interventions for medical students' depressive symptoms.
Keywords: depressive symptoms; empathy; medical education; medical students; mental health; screen time.
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