Digital leisure or sleep priority? Strategic temporal negotiation of late-night smartphone use in China’s accelerated society

This study reframes late-night smartphone use among Chinese young adults beyond pathologizing it as self-regulation failure. Integrating self-determination theory with social acceleration theory, we conceptualize this behavior as a strategic temporal negotiation to reclaim personal time. Structural equation modeling (n = 503) reveals that perceived leisure freedom and leisure satisfaction primarily drive behavioral intention, while perceived short-term risk deters it. Perceived long-term risk and guilt show no significant impact on intention. Perceived time constraint intensifies actual behavior, while social control paradoxically reinforces rather than limits it. Although self-control significantly reduces behavioral enactment, it cannot eliminate underlying motivational drivers. These findings reveal a tripartite negotiation: leisure benefits versus health risks, pleasure versus guilt, and personal autonomy versus social order. We theorize this as “strategic connected deceleration”—an adaptive response whereby individuals use technology to secure autonomous time amid systemic acceleration. Interventions should address structural time pressure rather than exclusively targeting individual discipline.