Relationship Between Group Activities and Social Anxiety Among College Students and the Intervention Effect of Group Activities

Abstract Due to environmental changes, personal pressure, and other reasons, college students' social anxiety is severe, which is not conducive to the healthy development of individuals. Therefore, intervention is needed. This paper aims to understand the relationship between group activities combined with mindfulness technology and college students' social anxiety and the intervention of group activities to explore whether mindfulness group activities can alleviate college students' social anxiety. Using social avoidance and distress scale (SAD), interaction anxiousness scale (IAS), and five facet mindfulness questionnaire (FFMQ) as tools, 110 college students with social anxiety from Enshi Polytechnic were randomly divided into an experimental group and a control group. The former group underwent mindfulness activity intervention for 8 weeks, and the pre- and post-test levels of social anxiety and mindfulness of the two groups were compared. Significant differences were not observed in pretest IAS, SAD, and FFMQ scores between the two groups (p > 0.05). In the post-test, the experimental group exhibited significantly lower IAS scores (43.28 ± 8.36) and SAD scores (11.45 ± 2.07) compared to both their pretest scores and those of the control group (p < 0.05). The experimental group showed a significantly higher FFMQ score of 118.78 ± 12.87 points compared to both the pretest and control group (p < 0.05). No obvious changes were observed in the IAS, SAD, and FFMQ scores of the experimental group during the follow-up period (p > 0.05).