Study: Teenagers aren’t getting enough exercise
By Roni Caryn Rabin, New York Times
Teenagers can be a notoriously sedentary group. Now a study showed that school may be a big part of the problem.
The study, which used GPS devices to track when and where teenagers were getting physical activity, found that, on average, they were physically active only 23 minutes a day while at school. Meager as that figure is, it made up over half the 39.4 minutes of physical activity the average teenager got every day.
Teenagers are “one of the tougher groups to get active,” said Jordan A. Carlson, a research assistant professor at Children’s Mercy Hospital in Kansas City, Mo., and one of the authors of the new study, which was published in Pediatrics. By some estimates, fewer than one in 10 adolescents get the 60 minutes of physical activity a day recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
