UK teenagers Facebooking into obesity

BRITAIN’S teenagers are Facebooking their way to an early grave and topping global league tables for sedentary habits, a World Health Organisation report suggests.

The study of adolescent obesity in 42 countries shows UK youngsters are among the worst in the world for the amount of time they spend hunched over computers.

Among 13-year-old girls, Scotland tops the “couch potato” league table, with England in fourth place for screen time, according to the data comparing “obesity-related behaviours”.

The study found 85 per cent of girls in Scotland spend at least two hours a day on computers, along with 81 per cent of those in England, and 80 per cent of those in Wales.

Girls in Armenia and Switzerland are least likely to have this much screen time, at 49 per cent and 52 per cent respectively.

The figures for boys are even higher, the data presented at the European Congress on Obesity in Porto, Portugal, showed.

It found 88 per cent of 13-year-old boys in Scotland spend at least two hours a day on computers – the second highest on the table – along with 87 per cent of those in England, placed ninth.

Figures for all UK children aged between 11 and 15 show a more than 50-per-cent rise in the number sat in front of computers for more than two hours a day, compared with 2002.

One in four teenagers in England is clinically obese by the age of 15 and Dr Steven Mann, research director for UK Active, said more needed to be done to encourage active habits.

“When teens are spending hours hunched over Facebook, Instagram and video games, they simply aren’t getting the exercise that they need,” he said.

Tam Fry, the chairman of the National Obesity Forum, said: “Adolescents are now slaves to handheld devices and this is doing nothing for their health.”

The WHO report, which compared a slew of international data, warned that childhood obesity had become “one of the most serious public health challenges of the 21st century”.

Dr Joao Breda, of the WHO’S regional office for Europe, said too often parents falsely believe that their children will grow out of puppy fat.

“Most young people will not outgrow obesity. About four in every five adolescents who become obese will continue to have weight problems as adults,” he said.