Active gaming in Dutch adolescents: a descriptive study

Monique Simons, Claire Bernaards, Jantine Slinger

Adequate levels of physical activity are part of a healthy lifestyle and in this way linked to better health outcomes. For children and adolescents, the physical activity guideline recommends at least 60 minutes of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity every day. However, many adolescents are not physically active enough and they spend a lot of their time on sedentary activities (such as video games). A new generation of video games that require body movements to play them, so-called "active games", could serve to increase physical activity in adolescents. The activity level while playing these games is comparable to light-to-moderate intensity physical activity. The current study aims to increase our understanding of 1) the demographic characteristics of adolescents who play active games regularly (≥ 1 hour per week) and non-regularly (< 1 hour per week), 2) time spent on active games, 3) the contribution of active games to daily physical activity and 4) the type and amount of activities being replaced by active gaming.