Objective: To investigate the situation of social sports activities and the relationship with depression among junior middle school students, to provide evidence for depression intervention. Methods: A total of 3 623 students from eight middle schools in Chengdu were recruited and surveyed by self-made questionnaire during Sept. to Dec. 2019 Z test, Chi-Square test and Logistic regression analysis were applied to explore influence factors. Results: The prevalence of depression symptoms was 45.60%. 57.34% of the students liked social sports activities, 65.87% of them participated in social sports activities during the past week, 42.25% took less than 30 minutes on exercise while 22.24% took over 45 minutes. Among the students, 20.16% of them had no special feeling after social sports activities, while 31.88% felt sweat. Uni-variate analysis indicated that compared with boys, girls participated more frequently and got stronger feeling than boys (χ2/Z=6.28，-2.67，P<0.05). Regression results indicated that for boys, high grade,low education degree of mother, low household socioeconomic status, not the only-child ,exercise alone would significantly increase the risk of depression, while liking social sports activities was protective factor (OR=1.26，1.91，1.52，2.56，1.58，1.71，0.77，P<0.05). For girls, high grade,low education degree of father, without one-child would significantly increase the risk of depression, while like social sports activities was protective factor(OR=1.29，1.74，1.37，1.47，0.66，P<0.05). Conclusion Social sports activities could reduce depression symptoms, which can be considered as first choice as after-class activity among junior middle school students.