TMCnet News
BRIEF: Student HealthJan 16, 2013 (Education Week - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) -- Fewer than four in 10 children of elementary school age met recommended guidelines for both daily physical activity and screen-time viewing, according to an online study published last week in JAMA Pediatrics. Federal guidelines recommend that children engage in at least 60 minutes of moderate to vigorous physical activity each day and that a child be limited to two hours per day of viewing a computer, television, or video-game screen for entertainment. Researchers examined data on 1,218 children ages 6 to 11 to determine how many met both recommendations simultaneously. More than 70 percent of the children in the study were reported to be getting the recommended 60 minutes or more of physical activity per day, and 53.5 percent were exposed to two hours or less a day of screen-time viewing. But only 38.3 percent of the children met both recommendations at the same time. ___ (c)2013 Education Week (Bethesda, Md.) Visit Education Week (Bethesda, Md.) at www.edweek.org Distributed by MCT Information Services |