The growing complexity of modern society and increasing academic and social pressures have contributed to rising psychological distress among young people, particularly emerging adults enrolled in universities. As a high-pressure population navigating rapid developmental, academic, and social transitions, college students are especially vulnerable to stress, emotional difficulties, and maladaptive coping responses [1,2,3]. With limited self-regulation abilities, many students struggle to effectively manage stressors, which can lead to heightened mental stress, reduced functioning, and risk of problematic behaviours. National reports highlight this growing concern: the Report on National Mental Health Development in China (2021–2022) indicates that youth mental health has shown minimal improvement since 2009, with a depression detection rate of 24.6% [4]. Similarly, the 2022 Survey Report on the Mental Health Status of College Students from the Chinese Academy of Sciences identifies stress as a major risk factor strongly associated with anxiety and depression among Chinese undergraduates [5].

Multiple factors contribute to the high stress levels observed in this population, including academic demands, social pressures, financial difficulties, living conditions, and concerns related to self-appearance and identity development [6,7,8]. These stressors negatively affect well-being and academic achievement and may lead to school attrition or long-term mental health concerns [7,9]. Given these trends, the promotion of mental health among emerging adults has become a public health priority in China, aligning with global frameworks emphasizing early intervention, prevention, and the strengthening of psychological resources. Within mental health promotion models, such as the health-promotion paradigm and positive psychology, enhancing protective factors, like resilience, adaptive coping, and physical activity, plays a central role in preventing mental health problems before they escalate.

Physical activity (PA) has been consistently identified as an effective strategy for improving mental well-being among youth [10,11,12,13]. Evidence suggests that PA reduces stress, enhances self-esteem, promotes positive stress appraisals, and modulates emotional responses through physiological mechanisms and neurobiological pathways [14,15,16,17]. Nevertheless, university students frequently fail to engage in adequate PA due to academic responsibilities, low motivation, and time constraints [7,9,18,19]. This is problematic because physical inactivity is associated with adverse mental and physical health outcomes, particularly during adolescence and emerging adulthood, a critical developmental window for long-term health trajectories [20].

To address these barriers, Chinese universities have expanded mental health education and counselling services [21,22]. However, these traditional approaches can be resource-intensive, difficult to scale, and often insufficient for meeting the needs of large student populations. Consequently, there is a growing emphasis on brief, scalable, and settings-based interventions that can be seamlessly integrated into daily student routines. Within this context, innovative digital health-promotion tools such as Brain Breaks^® have gained attention.

Brain Breaks^® is a technology-delivered micro-physical activity program designed to provide short, engaging exercise sessions lasting 3–5 min. These sessions incorporate a variety of enjoyable activities, such as rhythmic movement, music, dance, and culturally adapted PA, that can be easily implemented in classroom or campus environments [23]. Previous research has shown that Brain Breaks^® can improve emotional well-being, cognitive engagement, self-confidence, and motivation for PA across diverse populations [24,25,26,27]. As a digital, time-efficient intervention, Brain Breaks^® aligns well with mental health promotion principles, offering an accessible, low-barrier method to enhance resilience and reduce stress through routine PA engagement. Despite its potential, limited research has examined its use as a mental health promotion strategy among Chinese emerging adults.

Therefore, guided by the proposed multi-pathway framework integrating physiological, psychological, social, and behavioral mechanisms, the present study aims to investigate the effectiveness of a four-week Brain Breaks^® intervention on mental stress, resilience, social support, and physical activity among Chinese college students. By focusing on emerging adults, a group at heightened risk for stress-related psychological problems, and employing a brief, technology-enabled, settings-based intervention, this study seeks to provide empirical evidence on how structured activity breaks may influence multiple dimensions of mental health. Specifically, it is hypothesized that Brain Breaks^® participation will lead to reduced stress and improvements in resilience, social support, and physical activity. The findings are expected to contribute to the development of scalable mental health promotion strategies for university environments in China.

Table 2 presents the characteristics of the participants in the study, with a total of 80 college students. The mean age of all participants was 19 ± 1.41 years. In terms of gender distribution, the IG consisted of 65% females (n = 26) and 35% males (n = 14), while the CG had 57.5% females (n = 23) and 42.5% males (n = 17). Regarding academic grades, 25% of the participants in the IG were freshmen (n = 10), while 32.5% of the CG were freshmen (n = 13). Sophomores made up 25% (n = 10) of the IG and only 7.5% (n = 3) of the CG. Juniors comprised 15% (n = 6) of the IG and 27.5% (n = 11) of the CG. Seniors accounted for 35% (n = 14) of the IG and 32.5% (n = 13) of the CG. Table 1 presents the characteristics of the participants. No statistically significant differences between the groups were identified (p > 0.05).

Table 3 shows the comparison scores of mental stress, resilience, social support, and physical activity for the two groups from baseline to post-intervention. Meanwhile, Fig. 3 illustrates the mean scores of the IG and CG groups at pretest and posttest. After 4 weeks of intervention, the mental stress score was significantly decreased by −17.65 ± 5.32 with a larger effect size (d = 4.66) in the IG. The interaction effect between time and group was significant (F_1,78 = 235.09, p < 0.001, η² = 0.75), indicating that the reduction in mental stress was significantly greater in the IG compared to CG.

The resilience score was significantly improved by 1.02 ± 0.58 with an effect size of −2.42 in the IG, meanwhile CG showed no significant change. There were significant improvements in the three subscales in the IG (Tenacity: F_1,78 = 36.00, p < 0.001, η² = 0.32; Strength: F_1,78 = 10.63, p < 0.05, η² = 0.12; Optimism: F_1,78 = 18.2, p < 0.01, η² = 0.19), with no significant change observed in the CG.

For social support, both IG and CG displayed no significant changes from baseline to post-intervention (p > 0.05). Concurrently, no significant changes were shown in either group for subjective support, objective support, and support utilization (p > 0.05).

For the IG, the amount of PA significantly increased by 0.58 ± 0.90 with an effect size of −0.78. A significant interaction effect was found between time and group (F_1,78 = 22.31, p < 0.001, η² = 0.22), indicating that the IG experienced a greater increase in the amount of PA compared to the CG.

The present RCT examined the effects of a four-week Brain Breaks^® intervention on mental stress, resilience, social support, and physical activity engagement among Chinese emerging adults. The findings demonstrated that participation in brief, structured, video-guided physical activity sessions resulted in significant reductions in mental stress, as well as improvements in overall resilience and physical activity levels compared to the control group. These results support existing health promotion frameworks emphasizing the value of brief, feasible, and enjoyable interventions in enhancing psychological functioning among young adults [10,11,12,13].

Consistent with earlier evidence linking physical activity to stress reduction [14,15,16,17], the intervention produced a substantial decrease in physiological stress. One possible reason for the large observed effect is the relatively high baseline stress levels in our sample, which may have allowed for greater reductions over a brief intervention period. In addition, Brain Breaks^® combines multiple elements, short bouts of enjoyable movement with rhythmic music, which may have synergistically enhanced both physiological and psychological stress recovery. Physiological mechanisms such as modulation of the autonomic nervous system and release of neuropeptides (e.g., β-endorphin) may contribute to improved affective states and stress recovery [16,17]. Psychological mechanisms, such as increased perceived competence, enhanced self-efficacy, and positive mood activation, likely also played a role [14,15]. Given the high prevalence of stress and psychological burden among Chinese college students [4,5], these findings highlight Brain Breaks^® as a promising approach to stress reduction in university settings.

The intervention also yielded statistically significant gains in resilience and its subcomponents (tenacity, strength, and optimism). These results align with previous studies demonstrating that participation in structured physical activity can enhance adaptive coping skills and psychological resilience among youth and young adults [33,34,35,36]. The design of Brain Breaks^®, which encourages mastery of small, attainable goals and integrates enjoyable and rhythmic movement, may facilitate positive cognitive appraisals and strengthen internal psychological resources. PA engagement has also been linked to neurobiological factors such as increased brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), which supports neural plasticity and emotional regulation [37,38,39]. Collectively, these mechanisms may help explain the observed resilience improvements.

The significant increase in PA among participants in the IG suggests that micro-interventions such as Brain Breaks^® can effectively overcome common barriers reported by university students, including lack of time, fatigue, and low motivation [7,9,18,19]. This is noteworthy in the Chinese university context, where academic pressure often limits engagement in health-enhancing behaviours [21,22]. By offering brief, easy-to-implement, and enjoyable activities, Brain Breaks^® may help students incorporate physical movement into their daily routines, contributing to long-term health promotion.

Unlike the other outcomes, social support did not significantly change over the intervention period. A potential explanation for this finding is the relatively short duration of the intervention, which consisted of only four weeks with two sessions per week. This finding contrasts with some previous Brain Breaks^® studies reporting increases in perceived support and social connectedness [40]. However, changes in social support often require longer exposure durations, opportunities for interpersonal interaction, and the development of meaningful relationships [41,42]. Because Brain Breaks^® sessions in this study were focused primarily on individual participation and brief activity engagement, they may not have provided sufficient time or social context to affect perceptions of support.

Taken together, the study’s findings support the use of Brain Breaks^® within settings-based mental health promotion, particularly in higher-education environments. The intervention’s brevity, low cost, digital delivery, and minimal resource requirements make it highly scalable. Its capacity to reduce stress and enhance resilience aligns with preventive mental health strategies that aim to strengthen protective factors before mental health conditions escalate. Given China’s growing concern regarding youth mental health [4,5], integrating Brain Breaks^® into university wellness curricula, classroom sessions, or campus-wide initiatives could serve as an effective and sustainable component of a broader mental health promotion framework.

Despite the positive outcomes observed, several limitations should be considered when interpreting the present findings. First, data were collected from a single university, which may limit the generalizability of the results to other regions and student populations. Given the specific academic environment and lifestyle of our participants, future research should examine the intervention across diverse academic institutions, cultural contexts, and varied age groups. Second, the four-week intervention period may have been insufficient to influence outcomes that rely on interpersonal processes, such as social support. Longer intervention periods or designs incorporating peer-interaction or collaborative activities may be needed to detect meaningful changes in this domain. Third, several outcome measures relied on self-report instruments, which are subject to social desirability, recall bias, or subjective appraisal. These biases could potentially affect the magnitude and direction of observed associations, leading to over- or underestimation of relationships among these variables. While validated instruments were used, interpretation of the findings should be made with caution. Incorporating objective measures of psychological functioning or ecological momentary assessment could provide greater precision in future studies. Fourth, the study did not include neurobiological or physiological markers (e.g., BDNF, dopamine activity, cortisol levels) that could help elucidate the mechanisms underlying the observed improvements in stress and resilience. Integrating psychophysiological measures in future research would contribute to a more comprehensive understanding of how brief PA interventions promote mental health. Fifth, the control condition may not have provided a comparable level of engagement relative to the intervention. Although the use of a mental health brochure reflects a common approach to psychological health promotion in Chinese university settings, it lacked the structured supervision, interaction, and social engagement inherent in the Brain Breaks^® sessions. Consequently, some of the observed effects may be partially attributable to non-specific factors such as attention, participant engagement, or social interaction rather than the intervention itself. Future studies should consider employing more active control conditions to better isolate the specific effects of the intervention.

The findings from this RCT indicate that a brief, technology-delivered Brain Breaks^® intervention can significantly reduce mental stress, enhance psychological resilience, and increase physical activity engagement among emerging adults in China. As a feasible, scalable, and low-resource digital tool, Brain Breaks^® has strong potential for integration into university-based mental health promotion programs. Future studies should examine the long-term effects of Brain Breaks^®, explore mechanisms related to social support enhancement, and evaluate implementation strategies for embedding this intervention within campus health initiatives.