ABSTRACT
This chapter provides information regarding children and adolescents' physical activity patterns, shares known explanations for the patterns, and reviews methods for engaging children and adolescents in physical activity. Moderators and mediating factors known to foster and sustain physical activity participation are discussed. Emphasis is placed on how to provide opportunities for fun experiences so that physical activity habits acquired during childhood and adolescence become lifelong health behaviors. For age-related differences, maturation seems to be an important factor to consider, as disparities exist between children and adolescents. Ethnicity, as defined by a group with cultural characteristics in common, has shown to be related to physical activity levels in youth. Global positioning system, geosocial, and exergaming applications can be installed on smartphones and tablets, allowing children and adolescents to use them outside and away from home and school. Physical activity is important to health and well-being, but is critically important to the development of the child through adolescence and into adulthood.
