Inactive children likely to become inactive adults

Children who lead inactive lives are likely to grow up to become middle-aged couch potatoes, a study suggests.

Researchers compared the TV viewing habits of more than 6,000 British people born in a single week in 1970, at the ages of 10 and 42.

Parents should increase children’s physical activity to ensure they become fit and healthy adults, the University College London authors conclude.

“Do something active to displace TV,” advised co-author Lee Smith.

“In the evening time when families tend to sit down and watch TV they should try to go for walks instead.

“If you can’t go outside, try active computer games, anything that gets people up and expending energy rather than sitting down and snacking,” said Dr Smith, of the UCL epidemiology and public health department.

TV time

The authors acknowledge that for today’s children TV viewing is often replaced by time on computers, smartphones or tablets.

Children who lead inactive lives are likely to grow up to become middle-aged couch potatoes, a study suggests.

Researchers compared the TV viewing habits of more than 6,000 British people born in a single week in 1970, at the ages of 10 and 42.

Parents should increase children’s physical activity to ensure they become fit and healthy adults, the University College London authors conclude.

“Do something active to displace TV,” advised co-author Lee Smith.

“In the evening time when families tend to sit down and watch TV they should try to go for walks instead.

“If you can’t go outside, try active computer games, anything that gets people up and expending energy rather than sitting down and snacking,” said Dr Smith, of the UCL epidemiology and public health department.

TV time

The authors acknowledge that for today’s children TV viewing is often replaced by time on computers, smartphones or tablets.

Parents who are manual workers “are more likely to be physically active at work and may compensate for this by spending more time sitting down during their leisure hours”, suggests another of the researchers, Dr Mark Hamer.

“Their children may then model their mothers’ and fathers’ leisure activity patterns.

“It is important that children keep active. And if they can be encouraged to participate in sports, so much the better.”

The authors believe this is the first study to use a large, representative birth cohort to correlate childhood and adult TV viewing habits and health.

“Our work indicates that parents’ health-related behaviours may at least partly influence children’s TV viewing habits more than three decades later,” said Dr Hamer.

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Category: Features, Health alert