Objective: To explore the mediating effect and gender difference of mobile phone use in the association between different types of childhood abuse experiences and sleep quality of medical students, so as to provide reference for promoting sleep quality of medical students. Methods: A longitudinal study design method was used to select freshmen and sophomores in two medical colleges in Anhui Province from November to December 2019, follow up data were collected from May to June 2020, and a total of 6 879 students were included in this study. Spearman correlation was used to analyze the association between baseline childhood abuse experiences, baseline mobile phone use and follow up sleep quality. Bootstrap program and Process software were applied to test the mediating effect of mobile phone use in the relationship between childhood abuse and sleep quality. Results: Childhood abuse experiences were positively correlated with mobile phone use and sleep quality score ( r = 0.27 , 0.24, P <0.01), and mobile phone use was positively correlated with sleep quality score ( r =0.31, P <0.01). In the total sample, after adjusting for confounding factors, mobile phone use played a partial mediating role in childhood abuse experiences (including emotional abuse, physical abuse, sexual abuse) and sleep quality, and the mediating effect was 18.08% (18.12%, 17.15%, 24.09%). The mediating effect of mobile phone use on the relationship between childhood emotional abuse, sexual abuse, childhood abuse and sleep quality in girls(18.32%, 28.05%, 18.24%) was higher than in boys(17.81%, 18.94%, 17.63%). Conclusion Mobile phone use has a mediating effect on the relationship between childhood abuse and sleep quality, controlling mobile phone overuse may contribute to improving the sleep quality for those who have experienced childhood abuse.