One in Four Teens Worldwide Gets No Physical Activity, WHO Says
At a Glance
The WHO says a quarter of teenagers worldwide report no active days each week.
Girls are far less active than boys in almost every country and region.
Activity levels have barely changed in 15 years.
A quarter of teens worldwide engage in basically no physical activity, the World Health Organization said Wednesday, warning that this significantly raises their health risks.
Key Statements and Focus Area
Tedros on the Lack of Progress: "For 15 years, the world has made almost no progress in getting young people moving, and girls are being left furthest behind." — Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General.
Tedros on the Solution: "The answer is not to tell adolescents to try harder. It is to build schools, streets and communities where moving, playing and being active is safe, easy and normal." — Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
Focus Area: The WHO's new global estimates on teen physical inactivity and the gender and country gaps behind them.
The estimates, published in The Lancet Global Health, draw on hundreds of population-based surveys from 140 countries and territories covering more than 3.2 million adolescents.
One in four teens aged 11 to 17 reported no active days, defined as at least 60 minutes of moderate to vigorous activity, in the previous week. Extrapolated, that amounts to roughly 240 million young people.
On average, teens reported being active 2.7 days a week, and only 14 percent were active all seven days.
The gender gap was stubborn. Some 28 percent of girls reported no active days, compared with 22 percent of boys, while only 11 percent of girls were active every day, against 17 percent of boys.
National differences were also stark: around 40 percent of adolescents in countries such as Namibia, Nepal and the Philippines reported no active days, while more than 30 percent of youths in Bangladesh and Serbia were active daily.
The WHO stressed that activity is shaped by environment, including transport modes, access to safe space, the ability to walk or cycle safely, school settings, social norms and increasingly screen-centered lifestyles.
It called for policies that make physical activity an easy, safe and accessible part of everyday life.
FYI
The WHO warns that physical inactivity is a major risk factor for heart disease, type 2 diabetes and some cancers. It says helping young people build active habits early is critical to protecting their health and reducing the global burden of these diseases, noting that adolescent activity has remained "virtually unchanged" over the past 15 years.
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