Reuters – Lisa Rapaport
“Even though teens get more exercise at school than anywhere else, it still isn’t enough to meet minimum daily activity levels recommended for good physical and mental health, a U.S. study suggests. Children and teens should get at least 60 minutes of moderate to vigorous activity every day, the World Health Organization recommends. But in the U.S., only an estimated 8 percent of youth meet this standard, researchers report in the journal Pediatrics. Schools, where teens spend far more waking hours than anywhere else, appear to be a big part of the problem. On school days, adolescents got an average of just 23 minutes of physical activity at school, and this accounted for more than half of the 42-minute daily total, the study found. Taking weekends into account, teens were even less active over the course of the entire week, averaging only about 39 minutes of activity daily with the majority of exercise still happening at school.”(more)