Addiction to cell phone use is prevalent in the college student population, which not only affects academic life but also often coincides with psychological problems such as anxiety and depression. Four institutions of higher education with high detection rates of depression and other psychological disorders in previous years were the setting for this paper’s one-year baseline survey and two follow-up studies. Using mental health scores such as depressive symptoms as the dependent variable and cell phone dependence scores as the independent variable, we explored the association between cell phone dependence and depressive symptoms among college students using a partial least squares regression model that combines the features of principal component analysis and stepwise regression. Finally, we designed a social treatment and adjustment strategy for cell phone dependence, selected six college students with severe cell phone dependence to undergo a semester-long intervention and adjustment, and evaluated the effects. The study found that regardless of gender, there was a significant positive association between cell phone dependence and depressive symptoms among college students, with