Deteriorating air quality due to heatwaves and bushfires is creating further challenges for children and young people who need to get more exercise outdoors and spend less time on screens, according to a new report.
ParticipAction’s latest report card released Tuesday gives Canadian children an overall physical activity rating of D+. They found that 39 percent of children between the ages of 5 and 17 met the recommendation of 60 minutes of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity per day.
This letter grade was a slight improvement from the D in 2022, when children lost organized sports and school activities due to COVID-19 pandemic restrictions.
The nonprofit organization, which primarily uses Statistics Canada surveys to rank children’s fitness levels every two years, found that only 31 girls met physical activity recommendations. %, compared to 57% of boys.
Lead researcher Mark Tremblay said encouraging physical activity in children aged 5 to 17 is like “swimming against the current”, and children are encouraged to engage in free play and activities outdoors. They say they can’t sit indoors because of the screens, even though they should be able to benefit from it.
“This is a very demanding aspiration in the world we live in now, where we have built an environment conducive to staying indoors and inactive,” said senior scientist at the Children’s Society’s Obesity Research Group. said Tremblay, who is also an expert in the field. Eastern Ontario Research Hospital in Ottawa.
The heat wave and smoky air led to the cancellation of sports activities and recess, which could make children more sedentary, reports said.
But as the effects of climate change increase, children, especially those with asthma, will need to switch to indoor activities, which may be too expensive for many families, Tremblay said. he said.
Chris Ridley and Melanie Pringle, who live in Delta, British Columbia, south of Vancouver, said they prioritize physical activity for their son Aidan Ridley, 8, and sister Ella Pringle, 16. .
“We’re consciously trying to get them out,” Pringle said next to a field where children were trying out a few baseball bats.
Both children exercise by walking to and from school for about 35 minutes each day, with Aidan playing baseball in a local league and Ella on her school’s rugby team.
However, the annual cost of rugby is $400, which can be reduced to $250 if parents volunteer. Pringle’s job is possible because she works shifts, she said.
“Volunteering during school hours can be very difficult for families,” she says.
When air quality worsens due to wildfires, families head to community center indoor pools, which are free for high school students, but Pringle said that should also apply to elementary school students. The ParticipAction report recommends promoting physical activity early in life.
Ridley said local recreational facilities are inadequate, crowded in the winter and expensive for everything from swimming lessons to skating.
If families want to skate together, the cost can be close to $30 each time, limiting the number of times they can participate per week, he said.
“The biggest problem is kids not playing together,” Ridley said, keeping kids connected electronically while they’re missing physical activity and socializing just by leaving the house. He added that this is another drawback of the addictive device.
Dr. Melissa Lem, a family physician and president of the Canadian Association of Environmental Physicians, says climate change may make it harder for children to get outside, but nature also benefits both their physical and mental health. If not, then that should be the goal. .
“We know that outdoor exercise enhances positive effects. Outdoor exercise further lowers blood pressure and further increases self-esteem. That’s why it’s especially an issue among adolescents and children. I understand,” she said from Vancouver.
Lem said about 900,000 Canadians will be visiting or leaving parks as part of a program launched by the BC Parks Foundation in November 2020, before launching in all provinces by June 2022. He said he was receiving a “natural prescription” to help him appear in the hospital.
Any regulated health care professional can participate in the program, including nurses, psychologists, and occupational therapists. Patients receive a customized nature prescription file, and the standard “dose” recommends spending at least two hours in nature each week, at least 20 minutes at a time.
“The most common pediatric patients I write natural therapy prescriptions for are children who spend a lot of screen time, have mental health and behavioral issues, and perhaps have less social connections with other children. ,” Lem said. “For most, it’s a prescription for spending time outdoors. Spending time with friends on your phone screen outside rather than indoors.”
The report card gave Canadian children a “D-” grade for “active play,” with 22 per cent of children and youth spending an average of two hours or more a day in unstructured play indoors or outdoors. It turned out that there was. This is what the Canadian Pediatric Society is encouraging in new recommendations. It was carried out earlier this year as part of a “dangerous play” campaign to protect children’s physical and mental health.
Children and adolescents received a D rating for sedentary behavior, as 27% met the recreational screen time limit of 2 hours or less per day. This is up from the F given in 2022.
They received a better grade of B- for sleep, with 65 per cent of children and young people found to be meeting their age-specific recommended sleep hours (9 to 11 hours per night for ages 5 to 13). did. 8 to 10 hours for seniors and 8 to 10 hours for 14- to 17-year-olds.
Only 4% of 5-17 year olds met the combined 24-hour mobility guidelines for physical activity, sedentary behavior and sleep and achieved the same F rating in 2022.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 7, 2024.
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