Abstract
Environmental influence is one of the attributing factors for health status. Chronic interaction with electronic display technology and lack of outdoor activities might lead to health issues. Given the concerns about the digital impact on lifestyle and health challenges, we aimed to investigate the daily activity inclination and health complaints among the Malaysian youth. A self-administered questionnaire covering lifestyle and health challenges was completed by 220 youths aged between 16 and 25. There were a total of 22 questions. Seven questions inspected the patterns of indoor and outdoor activities. Fifteen questions focused on the visual and musculoskeletal symptoms linked to both mental and physical health. The total time spent indoors (15.0 ± 5.4 hours/day) was significantly higher than that spent outdoors (2.5 ± 2.6 hours/day) (t = 39.01, p < 0.05). Total time engrossed in sedentary activities (13.0 ± 4.5 hours/day) was significantly higher than that in nonsedentary activities (4.5 ± 3.8 hours/day) comprised of indoor sports and any outdoor engagements (t = 27.10, p < 0.05). The total time spent on electronic related activities (9.5 ± 3.7 hours/day) was were higher than time spent on printed materials (3.4 ± 1.6 hours/day) (t = 26.01, p < 0.05). The association of sedentary activities was positive in relation to tired eyes (χ2 = 17.58, p < 0.05), sensitivity to bright light (χ2 = 12.10, p < 0.05), and neck pain (χ2 = 17.27, p < 0.05) but negative in relation to lower back pain (χ2 = 8.81, p < 0.05). Our youth spent more time in building and engaged in sedentary activities, predominantly electronic usage. The health-related symptoms, both visual and musculoskeletal symptoms, displayed a positive association with a sedentary lifestyle and a negative association with in-building time.
Highlights
Overpopulation, road traffic density, excessive use of motorized transportation, and too few public spaces have made the physical activity more difficult in cities [3]. e sedentary lifestyles and the absence of physical exercise are among the high-risk factors for mortality [4]. e combined effects of urbanisation contributed to the expanding worldwide epidemic of chronic diseases [5, 6]
Internet usage in Malaysia was 80% with users spending a daily average of eight hours and five minutes online [16]. ere has been a resurgence of visual ergonomics to address the complications associated with electronic devices dominating lifestyle in this digital era [17]
Our target participants closely represented the youth of Malaysia because the composition of youth in the chosen university was comprised of youth from all thirteen states of Malaysia. e lifestyle variation among students from different universities in Malaysia was presumed to be trivial due to similarity in the topographical placement of most universities in township environments, macroclimates resemblance in all parts of Malaysia, and the standardization of academic requirement that needed to conform to Malaysia Quality Assurance
Summary
E lack of social cohesion and safety issues associated with rapid urbanisation has limited outdoor activities and regular exercising and irrefutable health benefits [8]. Most of them spend their time on outdoor activities only on weekends for recreation walking or other active activities such as cycling, swimming, gardening, or picnicking Simple activities such as walking and running in urban could be a challenge to safety issues to a pedestrian, which involve a high volume of traffic and complexity of physical characteristics of the road space [11, 12]. Given the concerns about the digital impact on lifestyle and health challenges, we aimed to investigate the daily activity inclination and health complaints among the youth in Malaysia
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