Social anxiety can make school feel like a stage, with every conversation or class presentation carrying the threat of embarrassment. In adolescence it can lead to isolation and falling grades. A new study from China suggests that teenagers who exercise more and feel more confident managing their emotions report less social anxiety.
Researchers at Capital University of Physical Education and Sports, Wuhan Sports University and partner institutions surveyed 817 students from five junior high schools in Nanyang, Henan Province. The findings appear in BMC Psychology. The students completed questionnaires on physical exercise, confidence in regulating emotions, social avoidance and social anxiety.
The study was cross-sectional, so each student was assessed once. The team ran correlations and a two-step regression model, adjusting for sex, grade and household registration. They also repeated the analysis after transforming the exercise scores and removing unusually influential cases.
Regulatory emotional self-efficacy is a person’s confidence in handling their own emotions, such as managing sadness or anger, or expressing happiness. Physical exercise here refers to how often, how long and how intensely students were active. Social avoidance is the tendency to stay away from social situations. Social anxiety is a persistent fear of being judged or embarrassed in them.
Students who did more exercise reported lower social anxiety, and so did students with more confidence in managing their emotions. Students who avoided social situations more reported higher anxiety. The correlations were moderate, at about 0.3 to 0.4 in either direction. In plain terms, the more a student exercised and the more confident they felt about handling emotions, the lower their anxiety tended to be, while avoidance moved in the opposite direction.
After adjustment, all three factors remained independently linked to social anxiety, and the model explained 26.6 per cent of the variation in scores. The pattern held in the extra checks. Confidence in managing despondency and anger mattered, but confidence in expressing positive feelings added nothing independent.
Social avoidance was also linked to fear of negative evaluation in a supplementary analysis. The authors say anxiety in this age group appears to be tied to several behavioural and psychological areas rather than a single cause. They argue that school support could consider exercise habits, emotional confidence and avoidance together.
The study has clear limits. Because the survey captured a single moment, it cannot show that exercise reduces anxiety, and anxious students may simply exercise less. All measures were self-reported, the sample came from one region, and most of the variation in anxiety was left unexplained.
Earlier research has linked physical activity to better mental health in young people. This study suggests that exercise sits alongside emotional confidence and avoidance as part of a wider picture, so no single factor tells the whole story. Programmes for teenagers often target anxiety through therapy alone, so adding exercise and emotion regulation skills may be worth testing in schools.
