ABSTRACT

There has been great academic and media attention concerning physical activity of children and adolescents. While activity levels are sometimes low, and often lower than we would recommend for health, this age group is also the most active in society. Physical activity among children is often reported to be quite high, especially if it is assessed using self-report methods. However, objective assessment using movement sensors (accelerometers) suggest quite low values. For example, physical activity statistics from the British Heart Foundation (Townsend et al., 2012), as illustrated in Figure 13.1, show that young people meeting national recommendations, when assessed objectively, fall to only 7 per cent of boys and no girls at the age of 11 to 15 years. Such data support the need to increase physical activity levels of young people.