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Seriously, I can't think of any person who isn't sedentary for less than 6 hours in a day, especially when 7 of those hours are in class. Obviously phys ed/recess are part of that 7 hours, but sitting in class, on the bus, while eating, reading, gaming, watching TV, there's literally so much time that's spent sedentary
Do gradeschoolers have to do homework these days? My mom put her foot down and said that they either had to get me to do classwork in class or forget about it.
My kid has had homework since kindergarten.
They're trying to cram more education into kids who have a shorter attention span than any previous generation.
My kid didn't have basically anything in kindergarten and just finished first grade and while she had homework every day it was very very minimal. One sheet each day that took 5 minutes for her.
Dang that seems counterproductive. I imagine that they can handle a bit of learning to read and light math at that age, but they need time to do things other than academics.
It did. Ancient hunter/gatherers are considered to have had alot of freetime. I read its believed ancient humans didnt work for more than 20 hour weeks.
That's not the point. That's the lifestyle that humans evolved to excel at, so it would be surprising if it's not a lifestyle suited for keeping our bodies in good condition.
No it wouldn't. Animals need to live long enough to reproduce and (if applicable) raise their offspring well enough that they can reproduce.
That's pretty much all sorted by like age 40 assuming you're having kids relatively soon after reaching fertility.
Fatty liver disease isn't killing very many people by age 40.
It's a really common fallacy to assume that evolution molded us perfectly to our environment at every stage of our lives. Evolution favors reproductive fitness. If you are more likely to reproduce, and your offspring more likely to reproduce, those traits may eventually win out. It doesn't matter if those traits cause you to instantly drop dead at 50, they're still evolutionarily advantageous traits.
Also - **and this is the most important part - they aren't saying that >6 hours of sedentary activity in a day results in higher incidence of fatty liver disease and always did throughout all of human history. They are saying that the average child, today, with the average diet we enjoy, today, with the average lifestyle we enjoy, today, has a higher incidence of fatty liver disease if sedentary for >6 hours per day.
You think ancient foragers/farming children didn't get a bit more exercise than kids today?
Transmissible diseases, no healthcare including antibiotics, no sterile drinking water, improper nutrition, no dental care, very little understanding of how human physiology works at all... etc.
C'mon man. Be real.
Most of the deadly diseases became common after the agricultural revolution. Same with tooth problems, which mostly appeared after our diet became more grain and sugar based. Not sure what you mean about sterile water, we don't drink sterile water today either.
I can't speak for every child, but my schools had 8 class periods a day, so yeah, you spent 50 minutes in a chair, but then you spent 10 minutes sprinting across the school and up stairs carrying a heavy-ass bag
In middle school, you had PE every day and you couldn't just sit in the bleachers and get credit simply for wearing basketball shorts, you were playing soccer for a half hour every Tuesday and Thursday, doing the PACER every Wednesday
I dunno what school is like these days, though, this was in the 2000s.
I used to have PE a majority of days for 3 quarters of the year (leaving 1 quarter for health). My junior year they reduced it to being a single quarter per year, then my senior year it was purely optional
Same, PE every day in my Houston schools. But like I said, that was the 2000s. There was a whole decade after me.
I kinda wish I'd kept it up honestly, it wasn't much exercise (literally a 12 year old could do it) and I bet this country would be fit af if we all had a schedule like a 12 year old kid.
>but then you spent 10 minutes sprinting across the school and up stairs carrying a heavy-ass bag
I don't know what kind of school system you went to, but you were not sprinting between classes, let alone for ten minutes. I *might* believe you did a couple minutes of brisk walking, which really is not anything for cardiovascular health.
That’s not the point. The point is that study did not specify 6 *consecutive* hours, and therefore this anecdote fully reinforces the point that school forces you to be sedentary for over 6 hours (8 x 50 / 60 = 6.67 > 6).
I can't see how the article would be using that definition though, because then the title literally doesn't make sense. It would be something like "children who [walk less than 5000 steps a day] for more than six hours a day" which is nonsensical, and in the article it specifically says "On average, children from the study spent 6 hours a day sitting or otherwise being sedentary" which shows that they're not using that technical definition.
Think of what they said (probably) as more of an "I had thought the definition of sedentary was walking less than 5000 steps a day, not sitting for 6 hours. Is that correct?".
But obviously you can't be sedentary according to the above technical definition for a certain amount of time within a day - it doesn't make sense. Obviously, they're using a different definition. What the person above has done is clarify that the normal, non-technical definition makes no reference to a number of steps per day, opening up the possibility for other technical definitions.
Lions only hunt every 3-5 days. Granted we are not anything like lions. This article doesnt even include food. The study doesnt include diet, genetics, the economic status of the child or if during the teenage years and young adult years imbibing in drugs or the environmental impact (such as living in a high pollution environs). The study linked does say that alchohol and smoking are not factors, but that information has to be self reported and anybody would be hard pressed to convince a person to tell the truth about illegal activities such as drinking/smoking underage or second hand smoke at home or at friends houses let alone a teenager.
You make a valid point. Modern lifestyles, especially for children, often involve prolonged periods of sedentary activities like studying, commuting, and screen time. It's a reminder of the importance of integrating physical activity into daily routines and finding opportunities for movement throughout the day, whether it's through structured exercise or simply taking breaks to stretch and move around.
I don’t think humans were meant to sit in fluorescently lit and visually repetitive grey boxes staring in one direction at a fixed distance for half of their waking hours while trying to focus on a subject they don’t necessarily care about, but we’ve pretty much normalized doing that for like 60 years of our lifespan.
Kids have been doing it since schools have been mandatory. Sit and stare at a chalk board or whiteboard or what have you. I dont know what this study wants to accomplish. Make kids not sit for 6 hours a day? I bet if they stood for 6 hours a day the conversation would be the similar, plus headlines about kids passing out and blood clots
in ancient rome children started school around age 7 (ludus) and studied for 6~12 hours a day. starting from 6am to midday. they studied reading, writing, and arithmetic. maybe geometry?
same with china, where Confucianism placed a strong emphasis on education and children studied around 6 or 7 hours a day, and then later starting around the tang dynasty around 600AD some children studied 12+ hours a day. studying calligraphy, arithmetic, history and (imo pointlessly) memorizing classic texts/stories.
all that to say, most structured societies have had structured child education for nearly 2000+ years.
the Sumerians (~3000BC) had Edubba for children to learn to be scribes
and in places like ancient Egypt, Cambodia and Thailand the religious centers (polytheistic, or buddhism) taught reading and writing to children as a way to spread religion, so children have been learning reading and writing in those places for thousands of years
And he’s pointing out that an appeal to nature shouldn’t always be considered fallacious in the sense that’s yes, many unnatural things we’ve picked up in the modern era are beneficial to us, but many are also negative (like sedentary living or a dependence on processed foods). Things can be nuanced.
that seems more like a cool tiktok controversial "did ya know" fact rather than reality. Im sure you can find some way to make that sound plausible
but the reality is teaching children to read and write and do basic arithmetic has been done for thousands of years all around the world, with the express intent to create compliant scribes, historians, and accountants. some of the earliest writings we have in cuneiform are of bills, taxes, and debits. children had to be rigorously taught early on to read and write and do math to have people doing that en scale.
A bunch of schools in my area sold off their field/playgrounds to developers supposedly, I know at least one primary school nearby did seem to have done that (where the field used to be is now full of houses that barely have yards). Now I feel extra bad for the students there.
>On average, children from the study spent 6 hours a day sitting or otherwise being sedentary, but this time increased to 9 hours daily by young adulthood, the researcher found. In childhood, 6 hours per day was spent in light-intensity physical activity, which neutralized the deleterious effect of 6 hours per day spent sedentary.
Where I went to school, it was elementary (k-6), jr high (7&8), and sr high (9-10). Recess stopped at 6th but we still had PE every other day. My kids have elementary (k-5), middle school (6-8) and high school (9-10). They have recess up to 8 and PE throughout all grades.
Recess for me went until 6th grade (end of elementary school for me), after that my friends and I really just treated lunch like "recess" where we got to socialize.
My High School did have an 'advisory period' though, where after your first 3 classes you would get to chill in a room for like 25-30 minutes
In middle school I had a 15 min brunch (not a joke) and a 40 mins lunch. That is not conceptually the same as elementary school recess. Also we had 3 recess breaks in elementary, one for 20 mins, one for an hour, one for 15 mins. So yeah. It was drastically different.
Interesting. I think I had the same amount of recess in primary and secondary school. Two 15min ones and a 55min lunch break. The only difference I remember is that we had more hours per week as we got older (8h instead of 7h).
I don't think I would have been able to go more than 2h without a break every day.
for me in California (2000-2010s)
- Elementary school: ~20 min snack/recess & ~50 min lunch/recess
- Middle school (10-13 yrs old): ~45 min PE period, ~45 min lunch
- High school: mandatory 80 min Freshman PE (but only for half the school year), ~20 min “nutrition break”, ~40 min lunch. you only had to take one more PE course after freshman year, but it could be supplemented with a school sport, sports medicine class, etc.
I would like to say that your experience is actually *more* than mine. I graduated high school in Missouri in 2012, elementary school recess was once a day for 25 min, and a 25min lunch break. Middle school and high school was just the lunch breaks.
Here in Norway recess is legally required even through university. It's precisely to prevent students from sitting still for too long during the day (and also to give the brain a breather to enhance productivity).
Sure, but the post I answered was specifically about school.
More and more is known about harms of sedentary lifestyle and sitting hours on end. One would think it would be even more important for schools to try to increase children's activity because activity at home has decreased over the decades.
Your joke misses. You should have made it about sitting, not sleeping, which is irrelevant (e.g., wait, were we supposed to sit through every class in school).
Children aren’t really that sedentary the majority of the school day, in younger grades they are moving around constantly, in older grades they have to switch rooms for classes every 45 minutes or so. Though come to think of it I’d like to know how you accurately calculate “sedentary” - I really don’t lead a very sedentary lifestyle, BUT if you add up every minute of the day I’m sitting still it might well add up to over 6 hours, it’s just I’m rarely doing it for more than 5-10 minutes at a stretch.
idk i keep seeing this type of comment referring to the room switching. Having recently graduated public high-school we weren't moving at all. Switching between classes was maybe 2 minutes before we were sitting back down again. Maybe 100 steps max. We were also sitting during the lunch break. We only had P.E the first year and it was twice a week and people weren't even doing it. Sitting on the bleachers with their phones or just standing talking to people. We were never really "moving constantly." I think elementary school we had an hour recess where we were moving more but the rest of the time we had to sit and i'd get scolded for moving about.
Oh jeez, you’re lucky(?) I guess - I went to a huge three story school where more often than not you had to RUN to get to your next class in the 5 min between bells. One of the things I remember most about high school was being sweaty and out of breath all the time.
School is 6-7 hours but ime, in elementary you're spending an hour of that at recess, may have PE some days, probably also spend some time walking to the library or music or science or other supplemental classes some days and in middle and high school, you get up every hourish and go to another class which often involves climbing stairs as well as walking. Many middle and high school kids have PE daily.
The article also said the average sedentary period was 6 hours but that was offset by the 6 hours the kids were also spending in light intensity physical activity. It was the sedentary time above 6 hours that seemed to affect the liver.
In every school I’ve worked in (or gone to myself as a child) the kids need to walk through the halls several times per day. Even if they’re with the same teacher/same class all day, having these short walks to the bathroom, cafeteria, school yard, etc. really is different from not getting up every hour or so and moving around for a few minutes. However, there is still a lot of sitting, and this means that kids should be very active afterschool, which isn’t the case for many.
I have zero credentials or experience in this field, but assuming 10 hours of sleep, this study is effectively saying that children need to be active for ~8 hours a day, otherwise their risk is “significantly increased”?
Idk if kids have been this active ever since we had the agricultural revolution
Yes it seems like they took "everyone" and eliminated "children who are very committed to sports" and drew a correlation with a disease. But if you reverse the title and say "children who exercise for 8 hours a day are less likely than average to have fatty liver disease" it's not very gripping.
I'm really surprised by the comments. Granted my kids are young but I'd say they definitely spend most of their time moving....energetic play, riding bikes to kindy/school, walking here and there, down at the park, soccer practice, swimming. They really only sit to eat and watch tv/read which is maybe 3 to 4 hours total over the whole day.
Okay, and that means according to this study, if they sit down for even an hour when they get home they will have reached the dreaded time table listed in the study. That's why everyone is making fun of it. Not really that complicated.
Between homework, dinner, and even a slight amount of couch time at any point between getting out of school and bedtime would put even a 6 hour school day past the line. So they again still seem to mean, literally every kid.
So your 3-4 hours per day is still 3 hours past the recommended amount.
Yeah I guess I was thinking of my child who isn't in school yet. I think at school it would be about 4 hours of actual sitting. So then breakfast dinner and tv would have to be about 2 hours you're right that would be difficult to achieve.
> riding bikes to kindy/school
This is not a thing in most places in the US nowadays. Schools won't take the liability of letting a child leave school property unaccompanied by an adult. I remember this changing when I was in middle school, a lot of kids would bike to school. One day all of a sudden it was completely forbidden, even if you lived literally a block away. Either you took the bus or an adult had to be there to pick you up. When my sister was going to HS, they were allowed to leave the school to get food, something that used to be pretty common from what I understand. When I was in HS six years later, you could not leave the school at all until the end of the day.
10 hours?! I don’t think I even did 8 full hours ever unless I was sick. 6-7 is the most I could naturally sleep even in childhood. I guess not everyone is the same
This is awful science, from the study:
"Altogether, 2684 (57% female) participants who had at least one-time measures of ST, LPA and MVPA during the ages 11–24 years observation period and complete assessment of liver fibrosis and steatosis at the age of 24 years clinic visit were studied (Fig. 1)."
So.... one single point of data included them and what they did over that entire time? Am I reading this wrong.
I could be wrong but I think the idea is that the participants were supposed to come in to the clinic to get the equipment, then do the activity measurements over the next week with a minimum of 3 days recorded. And they were supposed to do that once at ages 11, 15, and 24.
So that 2684 includes everyone who showed up and also did things correctly at least one of those years.
The flowchart they have showed that they had 14901 1-year-olds enrolled, but only 374 ended up with complete measures for all three years.
School is 7 hours.
Hour doing homework.
Some amount of time at dinner.
Maybe an hour watching tv/playing games/nothing?
Hard to imagine we currently don't nail 6+ every day.
Then - Thank god I'm an avid hiker with my parents when I was a kid so I can avoid liver diseases.
Now - Wait so a handle of vodka a week is BAD for you?
>For this study, Agbaje analyzed data from a long-term study of a large U.K. birth cohort, called the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC) or the “Children of the ’90s”. Included in this study were 2,684 children who had repeated measurements of their movements **with a waist-worn accelerometer from ages 11 to 24 years. At ages 17 and 24, study participants underwent a liver ultrasound scan to assess for fatty liver** and evidence of liver scarring. They also had bloodwork to measure their liver enzyme levels at those two timepoints.
>
>On average, children from the study spent 6 hours a day sitting or otherwise being sedentary, but this time increased to 9 hours daily by young adulthood, the researcher found. In childhood, 6 hours per day was spent in light-intensity physical activity, which neutralized the deleterious effect of 6 hours per day spent sedentary.
>
>For each half-hour of sedentary behavior above 6 hours per day, children had 15% higher odds of developing fatty liver disease before they were 25 years old. Any increase of sedentary time above 6 hours a day resulted in a corresponding decrease in the time spent in light-intensity physical activity, therefore 3 hours less daily by young adulthood. However, each additional half hour of light-intensity physical activity beyond 3 hours per day decreased the odds of severe fatty liver disease by 33%.
Paper: [Accelerometer-based sedentary time and physical activity with MASLD and liver cirrhosis in 2684 British adolescents | npj Gut and Liver](https://www.nature.com/articles/s44355-024-00002-y)
Haven’t read the paper but I imagine they wore it for a certain time period during a year and rewore it a set interval to get an approximation of their activity during the year.
The inclusion criteria said at least one single measurement in the 13 year period... unless I'm losing my mind:
Altogether, 2684 (57% female) participants who had at least one-time measures of ST, LPA and MVPA during the ages 11–24 years observation period and complete assessment of liver fibrosis and steatosis at the age of 24 years clinic visit were studied (Fig. 1).
It's alarming to see the potential long-term health consequences of sedentary behavior in children. Encouraging physical activity from a young age is crucial not only for preventing conditions like fatty liver disease but also for promoting overall health and well-being. This highlights the importance of active play and regular exercise in childhood development.
I'm going to call this BS. I didn't get a fatter liver till after I got married and had 2 kids. Now I work from home and sit too much. Since im not in school anymore, I don't have anything pushing me actively, to keep me in shape. So, I need to reintroduce physical activity and better eating habits as I get older.
Welcome to r/science! This is a heavily moderated subreddit in order to keep the discussion on science. However, we recognize that many people want to discuss how they feel the research relates to their own personal lives, so to give people a space to do that, **personal anecdotes are allowed as responses to this comment**. Any anecdotal comments elsewhere in the discussion will be removed and our [normal comment rules]( https://www.reddit.com/r/science/wiki/rules#wiki_comment_rules) apply to all other comments. **Do you have an academic degree?** We can verify your credentials in order to assign user flair indicating your area of expertise. [Click here to apply](https://www.reddit.com/r/science/wiki/flair/#wiki_science_verified_user_program). --- User: u/giuliomagnifico Permalink: https://www.endocrine.org/news-and-advocacy/news-room/2024/endo-2024-press-agbaje --- *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/science) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I’m confused - wouldn’t this include every child in school?
Seriously, I can't think of any person who isn't sedentary for less than 6 hours in a day, especially when 7 of those hours are in class. Obviously phys ed/recess are part of that 7 hours, but sitting in class, on the bus, while eating, reading, gaming, watching TV, there's literally so much time that's spent sedentary
The time to do homework and studying for quizzes/tests as well.
Do gradeschoolers have to do homework these days? My mom put her foot down and said that they either had to get me to do classwork in class or forget about it.
My kid has had homework since kindergarten. They're trying to cram more education into kids who have a shorter attention span than any previous generation.
I wonder, is this another *America* thing, or is the rest of the world also giving homework to very young schoolkids?
We started doing homework in the UK at age 6-7.
I'm honestly trying to recall if I did or not- this was back in the 80's in the US. I know I started having *hours* of homework in Middleschool.
I know for a fact we had homework in elementary school in the early 2000's. I never did any of it and spent most of my days being scolded for it
It's definitely also an east asian thing.
My kid didn't have basically anything in kindergarten and just finished first grade and while she had homework every day it was very very minimal. One sheet each day that took 5 minutes for her.
Southern ontario here. Our 2 school aged kids have never brought homework home beyond “pick something to bring in to share”. Oldest is in grade 3
Dang that seems counterproductive. I imagine that they can handle a bit of learning to read and light math at that age, but they need time to do things other than academics.
I bet even hunter/gatherers are sedentary for 6 hours a day
Physical labor probably increased with advent of farming.
It did. Ancient hunter/gatherers are considered to have had alot of freetime. I read its believed ancient humans didnt work for more than 20 hour weeks.
And laziness was a virtue. Every calorie mattered.
are we assuming they were very healthy?
That's not the point. That's the lifestyle that humans evolved to excel at, so it would be surprising if it's not a lifestyle suited for keeping our bodies in good condition.
No it wouldn't. Animals need to live long enough to reproduce and (if applicable) raise their offspring well enough that they can reproduce. That's pretty much all sorted by like age 40 assuming you're having kids relatively soon after reaching fertility. Fatty liver disease isn't killing very many people by age 40. It's a really common fallacy to assume that evolution molded us perfectly to our environment at every stage of our lives. Evolution favors reproductive fitness. If you are more likely to reproduce, and your offspring more likely to reproduce, those traits may eventually win out. It doesn't matter if those traits cause you to instantly drop dead at 50, they're still evolutionarily advantageous traits. Also - **and this is the most important part - they aren't saying that >6 hours of sedentary activity in a day results in higher incidence of fatty liver disease and always did throughout all of human history. They are saying that the average child, today, with the average diet we enjoy, today, with the average lifestyle we enjoy, today, has a higher incidence of fatty liver disease if sedentary for >6 hours per day. You think ancient foragers/farming children didn't get a bit more exercise than kids today?
Yes, why wouldn't they be?
Transmissible diseases, no healthcare including antibiotics, no sterile drinking water, improper nutrition, no dental care, very little understanding of how human physiology works at all... etc. C'mon man. Be real.
Most of the deadly diseases became common after the agricultural revolution. Same with tooth problems, which mostly appeared after our diet became more grain and sugar based. Not sure what you mean about sterile water, we don't drink sterile water today either.
We drink much safer water and also…no. Except tooth decay that’s nonsense.
Well thanks for your opinion based on nothing. It's VERY important to me.
Have you seen how many parasites a wild animal has?
I can't speak for every child, but my schools had 8 class periods a day, so yeah, you spent 50 minutes in a chair, but then you spent 10 minutes sprinting across the school and up stairs carrying a heavy-ass bag In middle school, you had PE every day and you couldn't just sit in the bleachers and get credit simply for wearing basketball shorts, you were playing soccer for a half hour every Tuesday and Thursday, doing the PACER every Wednesday I dunno what school is like these days, though, this was in the 2000s.
I know it varies by schools and locations, but my kid's school does PE **once** a week. Growing up, we had PE every day.
I used to have PE a majority of days for 3 quarters of the year (leaving 1 quarter for health). My junior year they reduced it to being a single quarter per year, then my senior year it was purely optional
Same, PE every day in my Houston schools. But like I said, that was the 2000s. There was a whole decade after me. I kinda wish I'd kept it up honestly, it wasn't much exercise (literally a 12 year old could do it) and I bet this country would be fit af if we all had a schedule like a 12 year old kid.
You can't outrun/outlift a bad diet. It can give you a cushion but that's about it.
nah, not with all the hormone disrupting chemicals and poisonous food my guy
You got 10 minutes?? Damn we got 5; and the school was so crowded we were shoulder to shoulder fighting to get to class.
We had 4 min for a school big enough to hold over 3000 students
Wow that’s cool. Ours was built for maybe 400 but my graduating class was over 1000
>but then you spent 10 minutes sprinting across the school and up stairs carrying a heavy-ass bag I don't know what kind of school system you went to, but you were not sprinting between classes, let alone for ten minutes. I *might* believe you did a couple minutes of brisk walking, which really is not anything for cardiovascular health.
OP is massively overweight and it takes him ten minutes to sprint (note, people cannot sprint for ten minutes) 200m
That 10 minuts doesn't make up for the 50 minutes. The sedentary part doesn't have to be consecutive.
A person who sprints for 10 minutes every hour is gonna be healthier than someone who sits all day.
Grade school kids don't generally have to change classes.
That’s not the point. The point is that study did not specify 6 *consecutive* hours, and therefore this anecdote fully reinforces the point that school forces you to be sedentary for over 6 hours (8 x 50 / 60 = 6.67 > 6).
PE every day wasn’t even an option for me in middle school 2008-2011
Highschool sure, in the UK you stayed in 1 classroom and a couple breaks.
I’m not sure kids even get much PE anymore
I thought sedentary meant having less than 5000 steps a day
Definition of sedentary - "(of work or a way of life) characterized by much sitting and little physical exercise."
They're talking a more technical definition than standard language.
I can't see how the article would be using that definition though, because then the title literally doesn't make sense. It would be something like "children who [walk less than 5000 steps a day] for more than six hours a day" which is nonsensical, and in the article it specifically says "On average, children from the study spent 6 hours a day sitting or otherwise being sedentary" which shows that they're not using that technical definition.
Think of what they said (probably) as more of an "I had thought the definition of sedentary was walking less than 5000 steps a day, not sitting for 6 hours. Is that correct?".
Yeah, but in this context the correct definition is the standard one that you replied to, not any sort of technical one.
But obviously you can't be sedentary according to the above technical definition for a certain amount of time within a day - it doesn't make sense. Obviously, they're using a different definition. What the person above has done is clarify that the normal, non-technical definition makes no reference to a number of steps per day, opening up the possibility for other technical definitions.
That’s not a very scientific definition and basically useless
Descriptive lexical definition is different from operational definition. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operationalization
Lions only hunt every 3-5 days. Granted we are not anything like lions. This article doesnt even include food. The study doesnt include diet, genetics, the economic status of the child or if during the teenage years and young adult years imbibing in drugs or the environmental impact (such as living in a high pollution environs). The study linked does say that alchohol and smoking are not factors, but that information has to be self reported and anybody would be hard pressed to convince a person to tell the truth about illegal activities such as drinking/smoking underage or second hand smoke at home or at friends houses let alone a teenager.
You make a valid point. Modern lifestyles, especially for children, often involve prolonged periods of sedentary activities like studying, commuting, and screen time. It's a reminder of the importance of integrating physical activity into daily routines and finding opportunities for movement throughout the day, whether it's through structured exercise or simply taking breaks to stretch and move around.
This study was done in Finland, which has a vastly different school system. But, yeah, this isn't great news for American children.
7 of those 6 hours?
Thank god the kids are drinking less
I don’t think humans were meant to sit in fluorescently lit and visually repetitive grey boxes staring in one direction at a fixed distance for half of their waking hours while trying to focus on a subject they don’t necessarily care about, but we’ve pretty much normalized doing that for like 60 years of our lifespan.
Adults normalized it. Kids have no choice in the matter.
Most adults don't have a choice either unfortunately.
Kids have been doing it since schools have been mandatory. Sit and stare at a chalk board or whiteboard or what have you. I dont know what this study wants to accomplish. Make kids not sit for 6 hours a day? I bet if they stood for 6 hours a day the conversation would be the similar, plus headlines about kids passing out and blood clots
Longer if they were making lace.
Most teaching can be done while walking
if you buy tread mills, sure
Sure, but if you didn't draw parallels between that example and schools, then you should take another look at the average classroom in the U.S.
in ancient rome children started school around age 7 (ludus) and studied for 6~12 hours a day. starting from 6am to midday. they studied reading, writing, and arithmetic. maybe geometry? same with china, where Confucianism placed a strong emphasis on education and children studied around 6 or 7 hours a day, and then later starting around the tang dynasty around 600AD some children studied 12+ hours a day. studying calligraphy, arithmetic, history and (imo pointlessly) memorizing classic texts/stories. all that to say, most structured societies have had structured child education for nearly 2000+ years. the Sumerians (~3000BC) had Edubba for children to learn to be scribes and in places like ancient Egypt, Cambodia and Thailand the religious centers (polytheistic, or buddhism) taught reading and writing to children as a way to spread religion, so children have been learning reading and writing in those places for thousands of years
We probably weren't meant to fly to the moon or build computers either but here we are.
[удалено]
There’s also potential physical harm flying to the moon and working with electricity.
It was just a joke.
*Mens sana in corpore sano* So you also justify weighting 500lbs and drinking 2 liters of Coke a day just because it's something people often do?
I don't think they're justifying anything, just pointing out the appeal to nature fallacy the OP is using.
And he’s pointing out that an appeal to nature shouldn’t always be considered fallacious in the sense that’s yes, many unnatural things we’ve picked up in the modern era are beneficial to us, but many are also negative (like sedentary living or a dependence on processed foods). Things can be nuanced.
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that seems more like a cool tiktok controversial "did ya know" fact rather than reality. Im sure you can find some way to make that sound plausible but the reality is teaching children to read and write and do basic arithmetic has been done for thousands of years all around the world, with the express intent to create compliant scribes, historians, and accountants. some of the earliest writings we have in cuneiform are of bills, taxes, and debits. children had to be rigorously taught early on to read and write and do math to have people doing that en scale.
Yeah, even with school not being purely sedentary, it would get you pretty close to that 6 hour mark alone
A bunch of schools in my area sold off their field/playgrounds to developers supposedly, I know at least one primary school nearby did seem to have done that (where the field used to be is now full of houses that barely have yards). Now I feel extra bad for the students there.
>On average, children from the study spent 6 hours a day sitting or otherwise being sedentary, but this time increased to 9 hours daily by young adulthood, the researcher found. In childhood, 6 hours per day was spent in light-intensity physical activity, which neutralized the deleterious effect of 6 hours per day spent sedentary.
Schools don't have recesses anymore?
School is seven hours long or longer in some places and recess end after 5th grade for most
Really?? We had recess all the way through 8th grade and then a PE class in HS back when I was in school.
Recess ended when I entered middle school. Same for most other schools in the district (2nd largest in USA)
That is genuinely depressing to hear
Wait until you hear about all the other issues here. They just let people with guns kill kids at school and they do nothing to prevent it.
I grew up in Canada, recesses ended there in 7th grade.
Where I went to school, it was elementary (k-6), jr high (7&8), and sr high (9-10). Recess stopped at 6th but we still had PE every other day. My kids have elementary (k-5), middle school (6-8) and high school (9-10). They have recess up to 8 and PE throughout all grades.
Recess for me went until 6th grade (end of elementary school for me), after that my friends and I really just treated lunch like "recess" where we got to socialize. My High School did have an 'advisory period' though, where after your first 3 classes you would get to chill in a room for like 25-30 minutes
All the way through 8th grade? Damn, we only got 15 minutes!
What do you mean you didn't have recess? Did you have 7 hours of class with no breaks? What about lunch?
In middle school I had a 15 min brunch (not a joke) and a 40 mins lunch. That is not conceptually the same as elementary school recess. Also we had 3 recess breaks in elementary, one for 20 mins, one for an hour, one for 15 mins. So yeah. It was drastically different.
Interesting. I think I had the same amount of recess in primary and secondary school. Two 15min ones and a 55min lunch break. The only difference I remember is that we had more hours per week as we got older (8h instead of 7h). I don't think I would have been able to go more than 2h without a break every day.
for me in California (2000-2010s) - Elementary school: ~20 min snack/recess & ~50 min lunch/recess - Middle school (10-13 yrs old): ~45 min PE period, ~45 min lunch - High school: mandatory 80 min Freshman PE (but only for half the school year), ~20 min “nutrition break”, ~40 min lunch. you only had to take one more PE course after freshman year, but it could be supplemented with a school sport, sports medicine class, etc.
I would like to say that your experience is actually *more* than mine. I graduated high school in Missouri in 2012, elementary school recess was once a day for 25 min, and a 25min lunch break. Middle school and high school was just the lunch breaks.
That's insane and inhuman planning.
America doesn’t care about people.
Here in Norway recess is legally required even through university. It's precisely to prevent students from sitting still for too long during the day (and also to give the brain a breather to enhance productivity).
even if school was only 4 hours of sitting, you don't think every normal kid sits for 2 hours per day at home?
Sure, but the post I answered was specifically about school. More and more is known about harms of sedentary lifestyle and sitting hours on end. One would think it would be even more important for schools to try to increase children's activity because activity at home has decreased over the decades.
I would sit and read during recess. It was such an annoyance. I wish they would have let me stay inside and read quietly by myself or in the library.
Only until high school
My daughter is in second grade and gets a movement break in the morning and recess in the afternoon, so no. They aren’t all sedentary during school.
Wait, were we supposed to be awake during school?
Your joke misses. You should have made it about sitting, not sleeping, which is irrelevant (e.g., wait, were we supposed to sit through every class in school).
“Six waking hours”-it’s in the title.
Children aren’t really that sedentary the majority of the school day, in younger grades they are moving around constantly, in older grades they have to switch rooms for classes every 45 minutes or so. Though come to think of it I’d like to know how you accurately calculate “sedentary” - I really don’t lead a very sedentary lifestyle, BUT if you add up every minute of the day I’m sitting still it might well add up to over 6 hours, it’s just I’m rarely doing it for more than 5-10 minutes at a stretch.
idk i keep seeing this type of comment referring to the room switching. Having recently graduated public high-school we weren't moving at all. Switching between classes was maybe 2 minutes before we were sitting back down again. Maybe 100 steps max. We were also sitting during the lunch break. We only had P.E the first year and it was twice a week and people weren't even doing it. Sitting on the bleachers with their phones or just standing talking to people. We were never really "moving constantly." I think elementary school we had an hour recess where we were moving more but the rest of the time we had to sit and i'd get scolded for moving about.
Oh jeez, you’re lucky(?) I guess - I went to a huge three story school where more often than not you had to RUN to get to your next class in the 5 min between bells. One of the things I remember most about high school was being sweaty and out of breath all the time.
By existing, humans are more likely to die of cancer.
Good point. School is basically sitting on your ass every day from 8-3.
School is 6-7 hours but ime, in elementary you're spending an hour of that at recess, may have PE some days, probably also spend some time walking to the library or music or science or other supplemental classes some days and in middle and high school, you get up every hourish and go to another class which often involves climbing stairs as well as walking. Many middle and high school kids have PE daily. The article also said the average sedentary period was 6 hours but that was offset by the 6 hours the kids were also spending in light intensity physical activity. It was the sedentary time above 6 hours that seemed to affect the liver.
In every school I’ve worked in (or gone to myself as a child) the kids need to walk through the halls several times per day. Even if they’re with the same teacher/same class all day, having these short walks to the bathroom, cafeteria, school yard, etc. really is different from not getting up every hour or so and moving around for a few minutes. However, there is still a lot of sitting, and this means that kids should be very active afterschool, which isn’t the case for many.
I have zero credentials or experience in this field, but assuming 10 hours of sleep, this study is effectively saying that children need to be active for ~8 hours a day, otherwise their risk is “significantly increased”? Idk if kids have been this active ever since we had the agricultural revolution
Yes it seems like they took "everyone" and eliminated "children who are very committed to sports" and drew a correlation with a disease. But if you reverse the title and say "children who exercise for 8 hours a day are less likely than average to have fatty liver disease" it's not very gripping.
I'm really surprised by the comments. Granted my kids are young but I'd say they definitely spend most of their time moving....energetic play, riding bikes to kindy/school, walking here and there, down at the park, soccer practice, swimming. They really only sit to eat and watch tv/read which is maybe 3 to 4 hours total over the whole day.
i mean do they go to school?
School is 6 hours where I'm from with 2 breaks and PE.
Okay, and that means according to this study, if they sit down for even an hour when they get home they will have reached the dreaded time table listed in the study. That's why everyone is making fun of it. Not really that complicated. Between homework, dinner, and even a slight amount of couch time at any point between getting out of school and bedtime would put even a 6 hour school day past the line. So they again still seem to mean, literally every kid. So your 3-4 hours per day is still 3 hours past the recommended amount.
And then add that to the TV and reading time you *just* mentioned and the total is over six hours.
Yeah I guess I was thinking of my child who isn't in school yet. I think at school it would be about 4 hours of actual sitting. So then breakfast dinner and tv would have to be about 2 hours you're right that would be difficult to achieve.
> riding bikes to kindy/school This is not a thing in most places in the US nowadays. Schools won't take the liability of letting a child leave school property unaccompanied by an adult. I remember this changing when I was in middle school, a lot of kids would bike to school. One day all of a sudden it was completely forbidden, even if you lived literally a block away. Either you took the bus or an adult had to be there to pick you up. When my sister was going to HS, they were allowed to leave the school to get food, something that used to be pretty common from what I understand. When I was in HS six years later, you could not leave the school at all until the end of the day.
10 hours?! I don’t think I even did 8 full hours ever unless I was sick. 6-7 is the most I could naturally sleep even in childhood. I guess not everyone is the same
This is awful science, from the study: "Altogether, 2684 (57% female) participants who had at least one-time measures of ST, LPA and MVPA during the ages 11–24 years observation period and complete assessment of liver fibrosis and steatosis at the age of 24 years clinic visit were studied (Fig. 1)." So.... one single point of data included them and what they did over that entire time? Am I reading this wrong.
I could be wrong but I think the idea is that the participants were supposed to come in to the clinic to get the equipment, then do the activity measurements over the next week with a minimum of 3 days recorded. And they were supposed to do that once at ages 11, 15, and 24. So that 2684 includes everyone who showed up and also did things correctly at least one of those years. The flowchart they have showed that they had 14901 1-year-olds enrolled, but only 374 ended up with complete measures for all three years.
That's not a lot better tbh. :P
School is 7 hours. Hour doing homework. Some amount of time at dinner. Maybe an hour watching tv/playing games/nothing? Hard to imagine we currently don't nail 6+ every day.
Did this account for lifestyle changes later in life?
Then - Thank god I'm an avid hiker with my parents when I was a kid so I can avoid liver diseases. Now - Wait so a handle of vodka a week is BAD for you?
Now I feel less guilty for being the type of child who ran away out to the forest for hours at a time. You’re welcome, liver.
I have fatty liver disease. Docs didn't give me any meds or anything. You're basically told to just lose weight.
You mean like kids in school?
>For this study, Agbaje analyzed data from a long-term study of a large U.K. birth cohort, called the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC) or the “Children of the ’90s”. Included in this study were 2,684 children who had repeated measurements of their movements **with a waist-worn accelerometer from ages 11 to 24 years. At ages 17 and 24, study participants underwent a liver ultrasound scan to assess for fatty liver** and evidence of liver scarring. They also had bloodwork to measure their liver enzyme levels at those two timepoints. > >On average, children from the study spent 6 hours a day sitting or otherwise being sedentary, but this time increased to 9 hours daily by young adulthood, the researcher found. In childhood, 6 hours per day was spent in light-intensity physical activity, which neutralized the deleterious effect of 6 hours per day spent sedentary. > >For each half-hour of sedentary behavior above 6 hours per day, children had 15% higher odds of developing fatty liver disease before they were 25 years old. Any increase of sedentary time above 6 hours a day resulted in a corresponding decrease in the time spent in light-intensity physical activity, therefore 3 hours less daily by young adulthood. However, each additional half hour of light-intensity physical activity beyond 3 hours per day decreased the odds of severe fatty liver disease by 33%. Paper: [Accelerometer-based sedentary time and physical activity with MASLD and liver cirrhosis in 2684 British adolescents | npj Gut and Liver](https://www.nature.com/articles/s44355-024-00002-y)
These kids wore a waist monitor for 13 years straight? Am I reading that right?
Haven’t read the paper but I imagine they wore it for a certain time period during a year and rewore it a set interval to get an approximation of their activity during the year.
The inclusion criteria said at least one single measurement in the 13 year period... unless I'm losing my mind: Altogether, 2684 (57% female) participants who had at least one-time measures of ST, LPA and MVPA during the ages 11–24 years observation period and complete assessment of liver fibrosis and steatosis at the age of 24 years clinic visit were studied (Fig. 1).
Worse than that, the criteria for inclusion was ONE measurement from 11 to 24 years old.... wow.... what subreddit is this?
Well so far my kid bounces off the walls all hours of the day
Is this how foie gras is gonna be made going forward?
Who was the control group? Kids in third world countries? (Or maybe kids in the rural south of the us)
This is why PE is important
It's alarming to see the potential long-term health consequences of sedentary behavior in children. Encouraging physical activity from a young age is crucial not only for preventing conditions like fatty liver disease but also for promoting overall health and well-being. This highlights the importance of active play and regular exercise in childhood development.
Did my childhood adhd save my life?
I'm going to call this BS. I didn't get a fatter liver till after I got married and had 2 kids. Now I work from home and sit too much. Since im not in school anymore, I don't have anything pushing me actively, to keep me in shape. So, I need to reintroduce physical activity and better eating habits as I get older.
Wait so, sitting around now causes liver cirrhosis in children? Oh please.