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Sedentary students: Less than 90 minutes of exercise per day is considered sedentary
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The lack of exercise among schoolchildren has worsened during the corona crisis.
A total of two thirds of all schoolchildren move too little, the health insurance company DAK-Gesundheit reported on Monday in Hamburg.
On average, children and young people in grades five to ten spend more than twelve hours a day sitting.
According to their own statements, more than every third school child did less sport during the Corona period.
According to the national recommendations for physical activity and physical activity promotion, children and young people should do at least 90 minutes of moderate to vigorous physical activity every day.
Of these, 60 minutes can be everyday activities such as walking to school or climbing the stairs in the school building.
The remaining minutes should be devoted to intense physical activity.
Less than 90 minutes of exercise a day is considered sedentary.
»The pandemic has exacerbated the lack of exercise«
Only 32 percent of all boys and girls surveyed are currently getting enough exercise.
In the first year of the pandemic, the proportion was even lower at 29 percent because many sports opportunities were eliminated due to lockdowns.
Before the pandemic, however, only 35 percent had exercised regularly.
This proportion has now shrunk again during the pandemic – especially among children from socially disadvantaged families.
Only 22 percent of these children currently have enough exercise, before Corona it was 27 percent.
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"The pandemic has exacerbated the lack of exercise," explained study leader Reiner Hanewinkel from the non-profit Institute for Therapy and Health Research (IFT-Nord).
"Especially those schoolchildren who weren't active enough before were less active."
For the 2022 prevention radar, IFT-Nord surveyed around 18,000 school children in 13 federal states about their health behavior in the 2021/2022 school year on behalf of DAK-Gesundheit.
Information about the study
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The prevention radar is a school-based questionnaire study on child and youth health in Germany, which has been carried out annually since the 2016/2017 school year.
Schools with students in grades 5 to 10 from 13 federal states (with the exception of Bavaria, Hamburg and Saarland) take part in the surveys every year.
The survey period was November 2021 to February 2022. In terms of social status, the study differentiates according to subjective social status (low, medium or high), i.e. how the respondents assess themselves.
The CEO of the DAK, Andreas Storm, called the lack of exercise among young people alarming.
"Because it is partly responsible for a wide variety of diseases." The deficiency is a massive health risk that is often underestimated, but can also be changed.
»We have to make it our task to encourage people to enjoy movement again and to prevent long periods of sitting.«
The children give different reasons for their abstinence from sports.
Most boys and girls say that they prefer to do something else in their free time (73 percent) or that sport and school don't go well together (72 percent).
63 percent don't feel like playing sports, and more than half of the respondents prefer to play on a game console or on the PC.
Socially disadvantaged schoolchildren say more often than others that they don't have the right equipment or nobody who wants to get involved.
sun/AFP/dpa
