Abstract Short-video platforms have become deeply embedded in adolescents daily lives, creating digital environmental risks characterized by technological embeddedness, everyday concealment, and continuous reinforcement. From the perspective of digital environmental risks, the article examines the manifestations and mechanisms of short-video addiction among adolescents and discovers that it is jointly driven by platform reinforcement, psychological compensation, and gaps in the social ecology. Current prevention and control efforts often focus on limiting use while neglecting functional impairment, on individual self-discipline while neglecting platform responsibility, and on disciplinary management while neglecting support and referral. Prevention and control should therefore shift from merely restricting use toward coordinated action involving supply-side governance of platforms, supportive family supervision, three-tiered school prevention, and tiered professional intervention, thereby providing a reference for promoting adolescents digital health.

Abstract: To explore the latent profiles of physical activity among junior and senior high school students and the association with short-video addiction, so as to provide evidence for the prevention of short-video addiction among adolescents. Methods: In November 2024, a stratified random sampling method was used to select 20 840 students from 120 junior and senior high schools in Guangdong Province. Physical activity and short-video addiction were assessed using International Physical Activity Questionnaire and Short-video Addiction Scale. Latent profile analysis was used to identify latent classes of physical activity. The robust three-step approach was used to examine the effects of demographic variables, including sex, school stage, age, and residence, on profile membership, and the Bolck-Croon-Hagenaars (BCH) method was used to compare short-video addiction levels across profiles after adjusting for demographic variables. Results: Four latent profiles of physical activity in junior and senior high school students were identified:low-frequency low-duration profile ( n =1 668, 8.00%), weekday high-frequency activity profile ( n = 12 408 , 59.54%), weekday low-frequency activity profile ( n =5 107, 24.51%), and high frequency high-duration profile ( n = 1 657 , 7.95%). With the high-frequency high-duration profile as the reference, girls were more likely to be assigned to the weekday high-frequency activity profile and less likely to be in the low-frequency low-duration profile compared with boys ( B =0.27, -0.33 ); senior high school students had higher odds of membership in the other three profiles than junior high school students ( B =0.63- 1.09 ); increasing age was associated with increased odds of the low-frequency low-duration profile ( B =0.11); rural students were less likely to belong to the other three profiles than urban students ( B =-0.97 to -0.79) (all P <0.01). After adjusting for demographic variables, short-video addiction scores differed significantly across physical activity profiles in junior and senior high school students ( χ 2=390.23, P <0.01), with scores decreasing in the following order:low-frequency low-duration profile, weekday low-frequency activity profile, weekday high-frequency activity profile, and high-frequency high-duration profile. Conclusions Short-video addiction levels vary across different physical activity patterns in junior and senior high school students. Overall, participants with high-frequency and high-duration participation score the lowest, whereas those with low-frequency and low-duration participation score the highest.