Associations between sedentary behavior and health and the moderating role of physical activity in young people within a cross-sectional investigation

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to determine the influence of sedentary behavior (SB) on the frequency of health complaints (fHC) as well as on self-rated health (SRH) and body mass index (BMI), and to determine whether physical activity (PA) moderated this influence. Data were obtained from the Youth Survey Luxembourg 2019 (N = 2,802), a nationally representative stratified random sample of all youths aged 16 to 29 years who were living in Luxembourg. fHC is a composite measure of eight common psychosomatic health complaints, SRH was measured on a five-point scale, and BMI was calculated by dividing participants’ body weight by the square of their body height (kg/m2). PA and SB values were obtained from factor analyses of the relevant questionnaire items. SB was evaluated as both leisure-time SB and gaming-associated SB. Multiple regression analyses adjusted for age, sex, socioeconomic status, and migration status were used to determine the association between SB, fHC, BMI, and SRH. We found that leisure-time SB was positively associated with fHC, but not with SRH or BMI. Gaming-associated SB was positively associated with fHC and BMI but was negatively associated with SRH. PA was negatively associated with fHC, BMI and SRH. No statistically significant moderating effects were observed. We found that both leisure-time and gaming-associated SB showed statistically significant impacts on health. Although PA is known to be beneficial to health, we conclude that its potential to mitigate the negative effects of SB is limited in young people.