SCREEN YOUR CHILDREN
Keep an eye on the kids to make sure they’re keeping active enough during the pandemic
When COVID -19 put society on pause in mid-march in this country, gyms were shut and group exercise classes furloughed.
Yet despite a limited number of workout options, most motivated exercisers found ways to get in the recommended 150 minutes of moderate-intensity exercise per week. The same can’t be said for Canadian kids and teens. When it comes to sustaining any type of physical activity for longer than a few minutes, youth have become reliant on the leadership of physical education teachers or coaches. Left to their own devices, the under-18 crowd is more likely to play video games than run, jump, skip, kick and throw.
Health experts have long lamented the erosion of unstructured active play among North American children. With schools, parks and recreation centres closed and sport leagues on hold, kids were left with bags full of sports equipment and nowhere to go. If that wasn’t problematic enough, physical distancing rules made it difficult to connect with friends, making active play a lot less fun.
Combine the lack of opportunity to be active with parents trying to juggle work-at-home and homework responsibilities, and it’s no wonder only 4.8 per cent of children ages five to 11 and 0.8 per cent of 12- to 17-yearolds met the Canadian physical activity guidelines during the first few weeks of the pandemic.
The data, collected from a survey conducted by Participaction in April, is in sharp contrast to the 15 per cent of five- to 17-year-olds who achieved the recommended amount of daily physical activity prior to COVID-19 shutting down schools and sports. And if you figured kids were taking advantage of their free time by playing outdoors, 62 per cent of young Canadians were less active outdoors as of mid-march compared to data obtained in previous years.
How much physical activity should kids accumulate over the course of a day? The Canadian 24-Hour Movement Guidelines for children and youth recommend a minimum of 60 minutes of moderate to vigorous physical activity and no more than two hours of recreational screen time.
“Children and youth who meet all the recommendations have better physical, cognitive and mental health compared to those who meet no or one movement behaviour,” said the team of researchers.
What were kids doing with all their free time during those early weeks of the pandemic? Seventy-nine per cent of Canadian children and teens were spending more time in front of a screen than scoring goals, chasing a ball or running around with their friends outside.
With the survey data collected from the responses of 1,472 parents of children ages five to 17, researchers are hoping to prevent a similar occurrence should a second wave further disrupt the scheduled activities that account for the majority of our kids’ daily physical activity. They used the information gathered to create a profile of which children were more or less likely to be physically active during the COVID-19 crisis.
Turns out that — on paper, at least — it’s relatively easy to get kids to move more. Children whose parents were able to restrict screen time had a much better chance of meeting daily physical activity guidelines than kids and teens whose parents didn’t set limits. But that wasn’t the only predictor of daily movement patterns.
“Boys were more likely to meet the physical activity recommendations (45 per cent) than were girls or ‘other’ (26.3 per cent),” said the researchers. The ideas that increased screen time comes at the expense of physical activity and that boys are more active than girls were acknowledged trends well before the pandemic. But it’s clear that both tendencies were even more pronounced in April.
So what are the take-home points when it comes to dealing with a possible second wave? The researchers acknowledged that parents were motivated to reduce the number of hours their kids spent in front of a screen, but also recognized the difficulties of juggling work, household and childcare demands. While it seems easy to just turn off the computer when it’s not being used for school work, the reality is that it’s a quiet activity that kids enjoy and will keep them entertained for long periods of time.
One solution is to promote physical activity among kids the same way coaches and physical education teachers do: organize it and schedule it. Younger children like small bursts of activity, so schedule several 10- to 15-minute bouts a day, keeping it fun and uncomplicated. For older kids, check online for sports-specific drills for hockey, soccer and so on, or focus on speed, agility and strength training workouts designed to improve athletic performance. Invest in some fitness equipment while shelves are restocked to make the workouts more varied.
Finally, get your kids out of the basement and into the fresh air. The results of Participaction’s pandemic survey jive with similar studies suggesting that kids are more active outside than inside.