GPS Tracking Devices Find Teenagers Aren’t Getting Enough Exercises
24 Dec 2015A new study conducted using GPS tracking shows that teenagers are only getting a fraction of the exercise they need,
The GPS study was performed to track teenagers throughout the day and examined how much physical activity they were getting while at school. The study, which was published in the journal Pediatrics, revealed that on average, a teenager gets about 39.4 minutes of exercise each day and about 23 minutes of that is at school.
One of the authors of the study is Jordan A. Carlson, who is a research assistant professor at Children’s Mercy Hospital in Kansas City, MO. He wasn’t surprised by the results, stating that teenagers are known for being difficult to get active. Even though the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends adolescents get 60 minutes of physical activity every day, less than one in 10 are actually achieving this.
Researchers wanted to not only find out how much exercise teenagers were getting on any given day, but also where the most exercise was being carried out. They were hoping they could use this information, such as whether more exercise was occurring at home, school, or other locations, and further improve the amount and quality of exercise teenagers were getting. The researchers thought maybe they could provide environments teenagers enjoyed being more physically active.
Researchers started by using data from the Teen Environment and Neighborhood study. This study looked at a total of 928 students between 12 and 16 years old living in a combination of suburban and urban neighborhoods. They were located in the District of Columbia and Maryland, Baltimore, and Seattle. The study took place between 2009 and 2011. It was evenly boys and girls in the study.
During this study, teenagers wore a GPS tracking device on a belt during the day, measuring their physical activity. The GPS program collected data every 30 seconds about the teeen’s location in order to see where exercise was being attained. Researchers believe GPS trackers give more precise data for such studies and actually pinpoint the amount of exercise in different areas of a teeneager’s life.
To get proper data, teenagers wore the GPS belt for an entire school day, from morning to evening, and one day over the weekend. The new study included a total of 549 teenagers who wore the GPS device for seven days. Teenagers spend almost half their waking time at school during the week, but only half of their exercise during the day actually occurs at school. While researchers had a general idea of how much exercise teens got, they didn’t realize it was such a small amount while actually at school.
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