Search Here

Modern kids are not as fit as their parents were, according to a recent analysis. The study which was performed on millions of children around the globe proved that children were not as fast runners as their parents.

Children took one and half more minutes to run a mile than their parents 30 years ago. A five percent of decline per decade was also recorded in health related fitness since 1975 among children.

The research was featured by The American Heart Association. The association was first to show such declines in children’s fitness in the last thirty years.

“It makes sense. We have kids that are less active than before,” said Dr. Stephen Daniels, a University of Colorado pediatrician and spokesman for the heart association, according to USA Today.

It is advised that children above 6 years of age should indulge themselves in 60 minutes of moderately vigorous activity every day.

“Kids aren’t getting enough opportunities to build up that activity over the course of the day,” Daniels said. “Many schools, for economic reasons, don’t have any physical education at all. Some rely on recess to provide exercise.”

Sam Kass, a White House chef and head of first lady Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move program has also stressed the role of schools in children’s fitness.

“We are currently facing the most sedentary generation of children in our history,” Kass said according to USA Today. 

In a new study led by Grant Tomkinson, an exercise physiologist at the University of South Australia, they concluded that present day kid’s are 15 percent less fit than their parents were.

“The changes are very similar for boys and girls and also for various ages, but differed by geographic region”, Tomkinson added according to USA Today.