Abstract
Daily life has changed for families due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The aim of this repeated cross-sectional study was to describe movement behaviours in Canadian children and youth 6 months into the pandemic (T2; October 2020) compared with the start of the pandemic (T1, April 2020). An online survey was distributed to parents (N = 1568) of children and/or youth (5-17 years; 58% girls) in October 2020. The survey assessed changes in movement behaviours (physical activity and play, sedentary behaviours, and sleep) from before the pandemic to October 2020 (T2). We compared these data with spring data (T1; April 2020; Moore et al. 2020; Int. J. Behav. Nutr. Phys. Act, 17:85) collected using identical methodology (N = 1472; 54% girls). We report correlations between movement behaviours and relevant parental factors and provide word frequency distributions for open-ended responses. During the second wave, 4.5% of children (4.6% girls; 4.3% boys) and 1.9% of youth (1.3% girls, 2.4% boys) met the movement guidelines (3.1% overall). Whereas, during the first wave, 4.8% (2.8% girls, 6.5% boys) of children and 0.6% (0.8% girls, 0.5% boys) of youth were meeting combined guidelines (2.6% overall). Parental support was correlated with their child's movement behaviours (T1 and T2). Our study demonstrates the ongoing challenges for children and youth to engage in healthy movement during the pandemic. Novelty: Our large-scale national study demonstrates that children and youth were not meeting the 24-hour movement guidelines during the second wave of the pandemic. Our findings illustrate the need to protect children and youth from the collateral consequences of the pandemic.
Highlights
The COVID-19 pandemic, and the related public health restrictions imposed to curb the transmission of the virus, are having an unprecedented impact on the lives of children and youth (Moore et al, 2020; Guerrero et al, 2020; Paterson et al, 2021)
The final to October 2020 (T2) (October 2020) sample comprised of 1,568 parents of children and youth
Given the changing landscape of the pandemic and varying public health recommendations across the first and second waves of COVID-19, this study aimed to extend the findings of our April 2020 study (Moore et al, 2020) and evaluate the continuing impacts of the virus outbreak on children and youth’s movement and play
Summary
The COVID-19 pandemic, and the related public health restrictions imposed to curb the transmission of the virus, are having an unprecedented impact on the lives of children and youth (Moore et al, 2020; Guerrero et al, 2020; Paterson et al, 2021) While children, such as those 10 years of age and younger, appear to be less susceptible to experience severe illness due to COVID-19 and children represent proportionally lower reported cases (Ludvigsson 2020), there remain legitimate concerns for children and youth’s wellbeing during the pandemic. In Canada (and other nations globally), the initial public health response to reduce COVID-19 transmission resulted in immediate school and childcare closures, the cessation of sports and organized recreation activities, and limited access to outdoor places, such as playgrounds and parks (de Lannoy et al, 2020; Mitra et al, 2020). With coordinated efforts to reduce COVID-19, these nationwide shut downs were extreme, with some suggesting shutdowns were akin to a global ‘medically induced coma’ (Lemieux et al, 2020)
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