Only one in four adolescents ages 12-15 are physically active for at least 60 minutes daily, according to new statistics from National Center for Health Statistics, part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The government's physical-activity guidelines recommend that children and adolescents do an hour or more of moderate-intensity to vigorous aerobic physical activity every day. That recommendation comes from the 2008 Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans, which were adopted by both Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move! initiative and the American Academy of Pediatrics.
Although this study is the first to examine adolescents ages 12 to 15, a previous CDC study from 2011 found 29 percent of high schoolers met those physical activity guidelines.
The most common activities among boys who reported any level of physical activity outside of school were basketball, running and football, while running, walking and basketball were most popular for girls.
Among boys, 29.5 percent of normal-weight and overweight individuals met the benchmark for daily physical activity, but a significantly smaller percentage (18 percent) of obese boys did so. A similar trend appeared for girls, but the differences were not significant – 24 percent of normal-weight, 20 percent of overweight and 19.6 percent of obese girls met the goal.
Other findings:
60 percent of boys and 49 percent of girls were physically active for at least 60 minutes five days or more each week.
8 percent did not engage in physical activity for 60 minutes on any day of the week.
Normal-weight and overweight boys were more likely to be physically active for at least 60 minutes daily than obese boys. Normal-weight girls were slightly more likely to physically active daily than overweight or obese girls,but the difference wasn't significant.
The full study is here.
