Meaning in life refers to an individual’s capacity to understand and grasp the meaning of their own existence, as well as being aware of the goals, tasks, or missions in their personal life. Previous studies have found that college students lack meaning in life, but physical exercise can enhance it. In this study, 3,196 college students completed self-report questionnaires to assess self-efficacy, life satisfaction, physical exercise, and meaning in life. The results revealed that the physical exercise not only influenced an individual’s perceived meaning in life directly, but also influenced it through self-efficacy. Furthermore, it confirmed the chain mediating role of self-efficacy and life satisfaction, whereby engaging in physical exercise can ultimately impact meaning in life through self-efficacy and life satisfaction. This discovery can help educators create interventions to improve college students’ physical exercise engagement and overall life satisfaction.

We examined the mediating role of social support and loneliness in self-identity and internet addiction among college students. Participants were 364 Chinese college students (female = 66.50%; mean age = 20.21 years, SD = 1.51 years). The students completed the following measures: Self-identity Status Scale, Social Support Scale, UCLA Loneliness Scale, and Internet Addiction Scale. The results showed two dimensions of self-identity of future self-involvement desire and present self-involvement to significantly predict internet addiction. Self-identity not only directly influenced college students’ internet addiction, but also indirectly impacted their internet addiction through the serial mediating effects of social support and loneliness. Student development and support interventions for preventing and reducing risk for internet addiction should seek to reconstruct their self-identity; thereby increasing their social support.

Although the emergence of a sense of national identity in daily narratives is common, little is known about how the Chinese older adults, particularly those living in rural districts, remember national events and construct a sense of belonging to their country. In this qualitative study, we investigate how Chinese rural older adults construct national identity by telling their life stories. Adopting a hermeneutic phenomenological approach, we interviewed 18 participants in a village located in southwest China. The explicitation of the data revealed that the older adults in this study recalled many national events in much detail while telling their personal stories as though these events formed an essential part of their self-concept and identity. Four themes were identified regarding the older adults’ identification with their country: remembering Chinese history, emphasizing Chinese culture, praising the central government and national leaders, and national identity in negotiation. We discuss limitations of the study and the implications for both future research and practices in educational gerontology and suggest that professionals working with Chinese rural older adults aware that their clients’ personal narratives might mix with national and governmental matters.

This qualitative study investigated how rural Chinese older people construct identity crises in their life-story telling. Challenging life experiences of 20 older adults from a village in southwest China were collected through in-depth interviews. The older adults were identified to have gone through crises brought on by both social upheavals and destructive interpersonal interactions. Adaption to the challenges contributes to their identity development. Identity crisis for the participants represents a process of disconnecting the bonds with significant others that transfer from parents to spouses and then to children across their lifespan. Study limitations and contributions are discussed.