In a study conducted earlier this year a ParticipACTION Report Card on Physical Activity for Children and Youth showed that Canadian youth are failing when it comes to playing outside. This year the health card saw two of the lowest grades ever in the years they have been conducting the study. A grade of D minus was given to Sedentary Behaviours as well as a D minus for Overall Physical Activity amongst youth.
While looking into this further I found that only 70 percent of children between the ages of three and four get the recommended 180 minutes of daily activity. This becomes extremely concerning as guidelines change for youth aged five and up to 60 minutes of moderate to vigorous intensity drops to 14 percent of kids reaching this amount between five and 11-year-olds, while it drops to an alarming 5 percent amongst youth ages 12-17.
This means that on average between youth of five-years-old to 17-years-old only nine percent are getting the hour of activity needed a day.
Other aspects looked at include Organized Sport and Physical Activity Participation which received a B minus grade. Sedentary Behaviours of having more than an hour of “screen time” per day led to a D minus grade with youth between three and 11 spending just over seven hours a day being sedentary, while youth between 12 and 17-years-old spend 9.3 hours being sedentary.
This means that kids are sitting more, playing video games, watching T.V., and are actually failing at getting outside and being active.
I personally play video games and like to watch T.V., while my job also involves screens. I know I need to actively make myself go do something other than being sedentary. It’s why I love organized sports like volleyball.
But when it comes to video games I do play them, but I either play an NHL game which with my settings takes half an hour or I set a timer for how long I can play. There’s games out there that don’t really track time as you perform tasks, which if you fail you start over as time in the real world continues.
For some people in larger cities their views of children playing outside is that it is more dangerous than playing inside, but in reality there is nothing better for a kid than to be enjoying the outdoors and being active. Being limited to playing inside can actually hurt a child’s long-term health according the Dr. Mark Tremblay, chief scientific officer of the report and director of the Healthy Active Living and Obesity Research Group at the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario.
In fact the study was saying that by over-supervising kids, and by having them play inside a lot then the child doesn’t develop resiliency, and their decision-making capabilities are hindered as is their executive functioning.
Essentially kids playing outside will, on occasion, scrape their knee but serious injuries are quite rare.
“Sanitizing and bubble wrapping the entire population to prevent what, in many cases is the unpreventable, is sacrificing the whole population,” Dr. Tremblay told The Star. “Mental and emotional health issues are on the rise like crazy now because kids have no ability to deal with things. We’ve never given them a chance.”
“We’re actually compromising healthy child development by hovering over them so much, keeping them sanitized and indoors, with the misguided belief that that’s the safest thing for them.”
So, it’s extremely important for kids to play, take risks, and develop instead of being wrapped in bubble wrap for fear of something happening to them. Yes, falling off your bike and scraping your knee hurts, I remember I lost control on the gravel and went down pretty hard. It hurt, I went inside with tears and got cleaned up, but I was encouraged to go play outside again. It didn’t stop me from riding my bike; it just meant I was more careful going fast if there was lots of gravel in an area.
