Active Video Games Don't Make Kids Exercise More

redletterdave writes "Researchers from Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas, designed every kid's dream study: they passed out Wii consoles to 78 kids who didn't already have one, and gave half the kids their choice of active game — such as Wii Sports or Dance Dance Revolution-Hottest Party 3 — and the other half their choice of inactive game, such as Disney Sing-It Pop Hits or Super Mario Galaxy. The research team tracked the youngsters for 13 weeks, testing their physical activity levels with a motion-measuring accelerometer. Participants wore the devices on a belt during four different week-long periods throughout the study, which allowed the research team to determine when they were sedentary or lightly exercising and when they were engaged in moderate-to-vigorous exercise. Accelerometer logs showed that throughout the study period, kids with the active games didn't get any more exercise than those given inactive video games. There was also no difference in minutes spent doing light physical activity or being sedentary during any week the researchers monitored."

Comments

Same as school exercise

[mdarksbane]

Study after study has shown the same thing with exercise at school.

I wonder if the problem isn't so much that the average kid is being less active, as much as the current average diet is making those kids who *aren't* inclined to be active/have a high metabolism obese instead of just out of shape.

Re:Same as school exercise

[Nidi62]

Go to any grocery store, and you can get packs of frozen vegetables for $1, and often times even less than that. While they are certainly not as healthy as fresh vegetables, they are still healthier and easily affordable, even on a minimum wage income. They are still far cheaper and healthier than pizza or going to a fast food joint, and they cook up in minutes. Combine that with a pack of $1.99 per lb of chicken, and you can feed a family of 4 for $5-6. Go to McDonalds, and 1 combo meal will cost more than that. A healthy diet is not out of reach for most of America. The problem is that most of America simply DOES NOT WANT IT. Just like with making sure your kid gets a good education, or has a good home life, it requires effort. Many people these days just don't want to have to make any effort.

Re:Same as school exercise

[Unoriginal_Nickname]

Yeah. All for the opportunity cost of one of those parents being at home to cook three square meals a day.

Re:Same as school exercise

[RogueyWon]

Sorry, don't believe you. The cheapest meals I eat each week are the ones I cook myself from fresh ingredients. The more expensive nights are the ones where I treat myself to a pre-prepared meal or a takeaway.

Fresh-cooked food takes longer to prepare and has a higher effort-barrier and, common pieties aside, unless you are a seriously good cook it may not actually taste as nice as the pre-processed stuff - but unless you're insisting on only buying organic and other daft middle-class obsessions, it's pretty much always cheaper.

Re:Same as school exercise

[mdarksbane]

I'd say ignorant and busy.

Many people do not know how to cook interesting food for cheap. Yes, it's something that they should learn, but it is entirely as much of a skill as algebra. It takes time to develop, is not really taught in schools, and if not taught at home is going to require a lot of self-motivation to pick up.

Similarly, much of good cooking takes time. If you have one parent working and another staying at home, you have that time. If you're both working, especially if you work long hours or have a bad commute, you may not have that time.

Does that mean that we should re-examine some of our societal priorities, or make a bigger deal about keeping two parents in households, or make teaching cooking and basic life skills a bigger priority? Yes. Definitely.

We need to realize that cooking, cleaning, shopping, and budgetting aren't things that people just know, even if *we* just know them because our parents taught them to us. There are all sorts of social capital that are so organic to our experience that we don't realize how hard it is to get by without them. That doesn't mean we should think it's cool to not know these things - but it does mean we should say "we should find a way to help people know this is an option, and how they can do it" rather than just saying they're too stupid and lazy to do it.

Re:Same as school exercise

[atfrase]

Yeah. All for the opportunity cost of one of those parents being at home to cook three square meals a day.

It is very, very important for people to read and understand the significance of this comment.

Many folks from the "middle"-class on up simply don't understand what life is like for single parents, or even or dual parents who must work multiple jobs to pay the bills. Yes, raw food of the sort that can be prepared into healthy and nutritious meals is not (necessarily) inherently expensive; what puts it out of reach for many low-income folks is not the money but the TIME it takes to go to the grocery store, bring those foodstuffs home, and then prepare them.

Single parents cannot leave their small children unattended that long, and bringing them along adds even more logistical overhead. There often isn't a single grocery store in low-income neighborhoods, requiring an even longer car trip, if the family can even afford a car; otherwise, an even longer bus ride, which also limits the trip to how much can be carried in two hands to, from and on the bus.

Making a healthy diet accessible to low-income families is not an issue of price, it is an issue of availability and logistics, and those issues are NOT insignificant. People need to understand that, to avoid falling into the trap of thinking poor folks are just lazy -- they're not, most of them work harder than you do, I promise you. Unless you've actually been a low-income single parent, don't presume to understand what the challenges are.

Re:Same as school exercise

[mdarksbane]

I think the class division is already there, between those who have the acquired knowledge and prioritization to provide healthy meals on a limited budget, and those who do not.

It is definitely more *complicated*, but it does not require significantly more time or expense.

Today, I can throw together any of several dozen meals that will be cheaper and healthier than frozen or prepared foods, and only take an extra 10 minutes of prep. If I had tried the same thing ten years ago I would have been limited to ramen and mac & cheese.

It used to be that girls studied home economics and cooking, so that someone in the family would know how to handle these things. I'm glad women have other and more options now, but we need to do *something* to fill that knowledge gap.

Re:Same as school exercise

[Unoriginal_Nickname]

Actually I'm pretty sure Rakishi meant to make a classist diatribe that calls lazy people too stupid to use refrigerators and microwaves.

Guess I wasn't paying enough attention!

You got to make kids do stuff...

[ZombieBraintrust]

Kids left to themselves won't change their behavior. Parenting means more than buying your kid a toy and hoping for the best. News at 11.

This reminds me of...

[filmorris]

I remember, once upon a time, when there was a thing called "outside". Kids didn't need videogames to exercise, as they did actual exercise. Seriously, thinking videogames=exercise is so dumb it should be illegal.

Causes of the decline of outside

[tepples]

A couple things not directly related to video games caused the decline of outside. One is the decline of pedestrian-friendly urban design. Suburban sprawl makes it difficult for children to find playmates in a like age group and for them to find a place in which to play. Another is public hysteria about child molesters who lurk in public play areas.

Re:Cheat?

[vidnet]

Kids whose parents incentivize them.