WHO-led Study: Adolescents Are Sedentary, Glued to Screens, Endangering Their Health

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Experts have been alerting for some time that youths do not exercise as much as they should. Now there is confirmation: 80 percent of adolescents (11 to 17 years old) around the world lack the minimum daily exercise activity required to be healthy.

Experts are not only referring to sports, but also to basic actions such as walking to school or playing ball with friends in the park. World Health Organization (WHO) standards recommend one hour of daily exercise. These data are now gaining a new relevance if we take into account the obesity epidemic that has affected virtually every country in the world.

Four scientists of this organization have just published the most extensive study ever conducted, both for the time it covers and the population it examines, on physical activity in this age group. The group of researchers headed by Regina Guthold analyzed the evolution between 2001 and 2016 of 1.6 million young students in almost 300 school surveys in 146 countries and territories.

Three main conclusions can be drawn from this follow-up: little or no progress has been made over a period of 15 years, girls exercise less, and sedentary lifestyles are a common feature in both poor and wealthy countries. The team published its conclusions on Friday in The Lancet magazine.

The country with the best result is Bangladesh (66.1 percent of sedentary life), and the worst is South Korea (94.2 percent). In the case of Bangladesh and India (73.9 percent), researchers attribute the good results to the deep implementation of national sports such as cricket, which youths play daily in their neighborhoods, and to the fact that girls are required to help with household chores when they return from school – cleaning the home is a physical activity.

At the other end of the table, 97.2 percent of South Korean girls do not get enough exercise.

Although there is a large disparity between the former and the latter, the other countries are in a very similar range. In Brazil, 83.6 percent of youths are sedentary.

“These habits will lead to poorer respiratory and cardiovascular health, poorer bone quality, and less chance of maintaining a recommended weight,” says Guthold over the phone at WHO headquarters in Geneva.

Gender disparity is very striking in many countries, but in the United States and Ireland, it reaches its maximum quota of over 15 percent. In the US, “physical education in schools is powerful, there is enormous sports coverage by the media, and there is a very strong presence of sports clubs and teams where they can enroll, particularly those that are traditionally dominated by men”.

Worldwide, 77.6 percent of adolescent males are sedentary, compared to 84.7 percent of females. In Brazil, this disparity is more than 11 points: 78 percent of boys do not exercise the minimum recommended, compared to 89.4 percent of female teenagers.

What is wrong and leading so many youths to a sedentary lifestyle?

“In the future devising campaigns aimed specifically at girls to practice sports will be required. We have to understand what motivates them. Conditions must also be created. To make it easier, for instance, to have separate changing rooms. And also to educate the community: in some societies, there is still a myth that it is not safe to exercise during menstruation”.

The study points to successful interventions, such as the British campaign “This Girl Can”, aimed at promoting women’s sport.

Experts point to life in front of a screen as the main problem.

“The digital revolution has reshaped people’s mobility patterns and the way they work, play, learn and travel,” says Mark S. Tremblay, an expert on healthy living and obesity at the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute (Canada), in an article in The Lancet. “People sleep less, spend more time in a chair, drive more and exercise less,” he explains.

But it would be absurd to assign 100 percent of the blame to cell phones and tablets, given that 15 years ago some results were not much better.

“It’s a combination of factors. Parents now have less time and there’s no one to go to the park with their children. There are fewer safe spaces in cities so minors can be on their own. And on top of that, we eat worse. If we want to change the trend, we have to realize that the problem goes far beyond changing snacks,” says Nerea Martín-Calvo, a pediatrician and professor of preventive medicine and public health at the University of Navarra (Spain).

Guthol, the main author of the study, also says: “We can’t blame teenagers or approach them only from a health point of view, but we can focus on the system, education and urban planning”.

Martín-Calvo directs the Being Project, which seeks to analyze the effect of diet and lifestyles on childhood health.

“The effects of these figures are already here. We are witnessing an obesity epidemic that has never been seen before. If children eat poorly and gain weight, they won’t want to go out and do sports, they become less resourceful and gain even more weight. But we have been teaching them all this since they were little. If we can get them to stay calm at the table, we give them a tablet, that’s what they’ll demand when they grow up”, she says.

The issue of adolescents’ lack of exercise is not new, as this macro-study shows, but there is a reason why this now takes on a new dimension. “Twenty years ago, there weren’t as many ultra-processed foods available to everyone, we hadn’t identified physical activity as something vital, but now it is,” says Ricardo Pérez Cuevas, a public health doctor and expert with the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB).

According to UNICEF’s latest annual report, which focuses precisely on malnutrition, 40 million children under the age of five are overweight. “And an overweight child will be an overweight adolescent,” he said.

In Latin America, only one country is less than 80 percent sedentary: Antigua and Barbuda (79.2 percent). “In the region there are all the world-class trends: lack of infrastructure to practice sports in schools, lack of physical education teachers, a school environment full of ultra-processed food, less and less walking and driving, and there are high crime rates that lead to a lack of safe spaces for children to stay on the streets,” he said.

He also points to screens as the great enemy: “Children and adolescents spend an average of three hours in front of the television, in which they advertise sugary drinks and ultra-processed foods. In addition, they spend time in front of the computer doing their homework”.

Cuevas points to a subject that is only just beginning to be addressed: “Adolescence has been a very neglected stage from the point of view of health”.

Where teenagers are more sedentary

South Korea 94.2 percent (91 percent boys – 97.2 percent girls)
Philippines 93.4 percent (92.8 percent boys – 94.1 percent girls)
Cambodia 91.6 percent (89.8 percent boys – 93.4 percent girls)
Sudan 90.3 percent (86.9 percent boys – 91 percent girls)
Australia 89 percent (86.8 percent boys – 91.4 percent girls)

Where teenagers are less sedentary

Bangladesh 66.1 percent (63.2 percent – 69.2 percent girls)
Slovakia 71.5 percent (65.5 percent boys – 77.8 percent girls)
Ireland 71.8 percent (63.5 percent boys – 80.5 percent girls)
United States 72 percent (64 percent boys – 80.5 percent girls)
Bulgaria 73.3 percent (67 percent boys – 80.1 percent girls)

Source: El País

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