Children in Canada and many parts of the world are not moving enough to maintain healthy growth and development, according to a global report by the non-profit, Active Healthy Kids Global Alliance. The report blames increased screen time, urbanization and the growing automation of manual tasks.
‘An inactivity epidemic’
“The results are alarming,” said Leigh Vanderloo, an exercise scientist at ParticipACTION in the Canadian non-profit’s news release. “The world is facing a global childhood inactivity epidemic.”
Few Canadian children get the recommended hour a day of vigorous play. (iStock)
Slovenia, Japan succeed
In Canada, only 35 per cent of children five to 17 years old are getting the recommended 60 minutes of heart-pumping physical activity. And more than half are getting more recreational screen time than is recommended.
The country that does best on children’s physical activity is Slovenia. Children there get 70 minutes of physical activity per day at school and sports is an important part of the culture. Japan had high grades in part, because it promotes and enforces walking to school and has ensured that elementary school are located no further away than four kilometres from students.
Parents less likely to turn their children out to play
When I was a child in the 1960s, parents sent their children outdoors to play daily, even in the cold of winter. But that has changed dramatically.
“As parents, we need to ensure that physical activity is valued as part of the family unit,” says Elio Antunes, president and CEO of ParticipACTION. “We need to reduce the screen time of our kids. We also need to avoid…hyperparenting. This has been a trend in Canada over the years where we’re trying to protect our kids so we keep them indoors.
“We need to ensure that kids have the opportunity, in a safe environment, to go outside, explore nature and play with their friends. And we need to stop overstructurning our kids and to allow them to have more freedom and more free play.”
Elio Antunes says Canada must learn from countries that have succeeded in making sure children are physically active.
ListenA call for cultural, social change
Antunes calls on policy makers to promote physical activity and to create a culture of active transportation encouraging children to walk, bike or wheel to school. He also calls for social marketing across multiple sectors to people understand the negative effects of screen time and ways to manage it.
“It’s a public health crisis,” says Antunes. “If we don’t address it we’ll have a generation of couch potatoes that will have adverse effects on their physical, mental, social and cognitive health problems.
“Physical activity contributes to many aspects of one’s life and so, we need to ensure our kids are getting enough every day.”
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