Abstract
The aim of this study was to determine whether ownership and use of electronic media were associated with sedentary time and cardiorespiratory fitness (fitness) in youth. We also aimed to determine if associations were independent of physical activity (PA).Fitness was measured using the 20 m shuttle-run. PA, sedentary time, ownership of media devices and media use were self-reported.Participants (n = 678, age 10–15 years) reported daily sedentary time of 620 (± 210) min. Forty-one percent of participants had low PA and 50.4% had low fitness.Higher weekend sedentary time was associated with low fitness in girls (p = 0.005) and boys (p < 0.001) and remained significant when adjusted for PA in the latter (p = 0.006). Using social media was associated with higher sedentary time in both sexes and low fitness in girls. High sedentary time was more likely (OR = 5.3, 95%CI: 2.0–14.4) in boys who owned game consoles. Low fitness was more likely in boys who owned digital/satellite TV receivers (OR = 1.8, 95%CI: 1.8–3.2).Schoolchildren spent > 10 h or ~ 85% of each waking day sedentary. Use of social media was associated with higher sedentary time in both sexes and with low fitness in girls. Reducing social media use in youth offers one potential target for intervention. Behaviours associated with sedentary time differed from predictors of low fitness. The complex and often sex-specific interactions identified between sedentary time, PA and fitness suggest the need for carefully targeted interventions to reduce sedentary time and improve fitness in English youth.
Highlights
The proliferation of new media and increased availability via multiple devices, quickly render obsolete research examining the associations between media and health
Detailed composition of weekday sedentary time is given in supplementary materials (Figure 1.) School was the predominant component of sedentary time in both sexes
Our aims were to identify the contribution of electronic media to sedentary time and investigate whether media ownership or use were associated with cardiorespiratory fitness
Summary
The proliferation of new media and increased availability via multiple devices, quickly render obsolete research examining the associations between media and health. Studies of children’s sedentary behaviours concerned TV viewing (Biddle et al, 2009a; Eisenmann et al, 2002) while later studies concerned ‘screen-time’(Ekelund et al, 2006; Ogunleye et al, 2012) but neither measure accurate estimates overall sedentary behaviour (Biddle et al, 2009a) These studies were of great value as they identified that children engaged in excessive screen-time were often inactive, unfit and in poor metabolic health (Ekelund et al, 2006). Physical activity (PA) promotes health through preferential adaptation of multiple physiological systems (Warburton et al, 2006) One such adaptation is quantifiable through the assessment of cardiorespiratory fitness ( ‘fitness’) (Williams, 2001). Objective measures of fitness are more powerful predictors of health than measures of PA (Williams, 2001) and may even provide better estimate of habitual PA than self-report (Swift et al, 2013)
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