As teens move into their twenties then the rate of activity increases, but it still remains below what twenty-somethings would ave experienced even ten years ago. The reason? Being connected with digital technology for long periods of time is the primary reason.
The research comes from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and it has come up with several interesting trends relating to physical activity. This includes the middle aged as well as teens, for a further trend is with activity levels from the age of 35 seeing the start of a decline that extends through midlife and into older adulthood. Data was drawn from the U.S. National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, with information taken from the 2003-2004 and 2005-2006 survey cycles. For both period, 12,529 participants wore tracking devices for seven straight days and the big data analytics were then crunched.
Commenting on the headline figure about teens, lead researcher Professor Vadim Zipunnikov notes: “”Activity levels at the end of adolescence were alarmingly low, and by age 19, they were comparable to 60-year-olds.” The research does not only highlight areas of concern it suggests strategies for resolution. Noting, for example, that with school-age children the primary window for activity is in the afternoon between two and six, the researchers suggest that the educational system target this time window as the period to schedule physical education classes.
The reason into the activity levels of young people has been published in the journal Preventive Medicine. The research paper is titled “Re-evaluating the effect of age on physical activity over the lifespan.”
