Children Exercising Less, Spending More Time on Couch Than Before COVID-19 Pandemic

The following is excerpted from an online article posted by StudyFinds.

Children are exercising less than they did before the pandemic and spending too much time on the sofa, warns a new study.

Researchers in the United Kingdom show that less than four in 10 youngsters (36 percent) were doing enough exercise by the end of last year — despite their parents still keeping fit as much as they used to before COVID-19 struck.

Children ages 10 to 11 in the U.K. were doing 56 minutes of moderate to vigorous physical activity on weekdays as lockdown rules were eased between last April and December. That’s four minutes less than the recommended hour and eight minutes less, or a drop of 13 percent, compared with what they were doing prior to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Young ones are also spending 25 more minutes lounging around on the sofa or in bed during the week than they used to. Children were even less active at the weekend when they did just 46 minutes of moderate to intense physical activity, eight minutes less than before the pandemic.

For the study, 393 children and their parents from 23 schools in the Bristol area wore an accelerometer to measure the intensity of their exercise. Participants also completed a questionnaire. These findings were compared with facts and figures about 1,296 children and their parents who were recruited from 50 schools in the same area before the pandemic.

Getting enough exercise is vital if children are to grow up healthy and happy.

The findings were published in the International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity.

Source: StudyFinds
https://www.studyfinds.org/children-exercise-pandemic/