A Network Analysis of Behavioral, Psychological, and Physiological Factors: Identifying Key Targets for Adolescents’ Health Promotion

Adolescents’ health is confronted with multidimensional risks in terms of behavioral, psychological, and physiological domains. Developing precision intervention strategies to achieve systemic improvement serves as a critical foundation for the in-depth advancement of the Healthy China strategy. The data on physical activity, mental health, and circadian rhythms of the autonomic nervous system (ANS) from 119 participants were integrated, and the network analysis and directed acyclic graph (DAG) were used to explore network structures and identify core and bridge nodes. The study found that: 1) ANS function serves as the core hub of the behavior–psychology–physiology tripartite network, exhibiting bidirectional associations with physical activity and directly influencing mental health; the circadian-based ANS homeostatic levels emerged as the network’s core node; 2) different types of physical activity displayed topological differences, and the total physical activity (TPA) served as the critical cross-dimensional bridge node; 3) the network structure, core nodes, and bridge node demonstrated cross-gender stability. Based on these findings, this study proposed a multi-target synergistic intervention strategy guided by ANS function monitoring and with TPA enhancement as the key lever. Future research should verify the efficacy of these targets through experimental studies and prioritize the development of a universal intervention framework.