Objective To investigate the incidence of chronic back pain in college students and the influence of psychological factors on chronic low back pain. Methods In the second semester of the 2017-2018 academic year, a total of 10,000 students were selected mainly from Shanghai Jiaotong University and a number of universities across the country. The questionnaire included demographic factors, low back pain prevalence, SCL-90, stress of college student and interpersonal problems. Logistic regression was used to analyze the potential risk factors for low back pain. Results A total of 8664 questionnaires were retrieved from 10,000 questionnaires, including 3949 males and 4715 females. The results showed that the prevalence of chronic back pain in college students was 26.62%. The incidence of female students was higher than that of boys. According to the SCL-90, contemporary college students face different levels of psychological problems (31.18% have depression problems, 18.32% have anxiety problems, 39.77% have coercion problems, 20.58% have paranoia problems, and 30.02% have interpersonal relationship sensitive issues) . The majority of contemporary college students are facing a lot of study pressure (60.39% of the students feel that the competition among the students is fierce, 76.85% are afraid of failing to achieve their goals), and the human relationships are generally (41.82% of the students have conflicts with their family members, 34.51% of the students conflict with classmates). Conclusion The incidence of chronic low back pain is relatively high in contemporary college students. Psychological factors (including learning pressure and interpersonal relationship problems) have a certain influence on the prevalence of chronic back pain in college students.