Active video games won’t make your kids fitter, says study

A new study has dashed parents' hopes that active video games like Dance Dance Revolution and Wii Fit Plus will get their sedentary offspring up and moving.

It turns out that giving kids so-called "exergames" won't turn couch potatoes into athletes—or even provide significant health benefits.

Tom Baranowski, a professor of pediatrics at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, and his team, gave new Wii consoles to 78 lucky kids between the ages of nine and 12.

Some children were given active games like Dance Dance Revolution, EA Sports Active and Wii Sports, to play at home, while others got games like Madden NFL 10 and Super Mario Galaxy, which work out little more than a thumb. The kids, all of above-average weight, each wore an accelerometer to track movement.

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At the end of the 13-week study, the authors found that the youngsters who were given exergames had been no more active than the others.

"These results provide no reason to believe that simply acquiring an active video game under naturalistic circumstances provides a public health benefit to children" they conclude.

Kelly Murumets, President & CEO of ParticipACTION, which advocates for physical activity and sport participation in Canada, says Canada is facing a physical inactivity "crisis," particularly among children and youth.

Experts recommend one hour per day of moderate-to-vigorous exercise — and only 7 percent of Canadian kids are getting it, says Murumets.

"When I was a kid, an hour a day was just part of living. Today, it's not," she says. "We know that on average our kids spend 6 hours a day on screens. If you add that up, it's 42 hours a week on screens — more time than their parents spend at work."

Though active gaming sounds like an ideal solution, allowing kids to stay in front of screens while being physically active, Murumets says the problem is that kids left on their own don't play with much intensity.

"As parents it's our job to reverse this trend. If they're active gaming, we need to be playing with them, and getting them to play more vigorously," she says, adding that getting kids outdoors and limiting screen time are more likely to help kids develop an active lifestyle than buying them a Wii.

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A previous study by the University of Calgary's Canadian Exergaming Research Centre suggested that kids could improve their balance and fight child obesity by playing active games. The author of that study said that many kids are shy about participating in schoolyard games or sports, but nearly all kids liked playing video games.

Active games have also been proposed as an alternative to outdoor play in neighborhoods where playing outside is dangerous.

However, while the children in the University of Calgary study were compelled to play games rather actively, the children in Baranowski's study didn't play the games with much vigor or they compensated for the increased activity by being even more sedentary during the rest of the day.