Huge Study Shows American Kids Don’t Get Enough Exercise

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Jun 12, 8:22AM EDT · Published Oct 24, 10:55AM EDT

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Huge Study Shows American Kids Don’t Get Enough Exercise — © John Moore / Getty Images

A large new study released today shows that American children fall short of the amount of exercise they need each day. The figures vary by both geography and type of exercise.

The research was released by the National Physical Activity Plan (NPAP) Alliance, which releases a report card on children and youth physical activity and exercises every two years. The current version is called the 2018 U.S. Report Card on Physical Activity for Children and Youth, and its purpose is to assess “the levels of physical activity and sedentary behaviors in American children and youth.” Another goal of the study is to examine circumstances that prevent children from getting the necessary amount of exercise per day. This threshold is one hour of physical activity. The age group measured is children and youth ages 6 to 17 years old.

Most of the members of the committee that oversaw the study were academicians, led by Peter T. Katzmarzyk, PhD, FACSM, FAHA, Pennington Biomedical Research Center. Pennington is part of Louisiana State University.

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The results are based on nine indicators of physical activity:

Overall physical activity
Sedentary behaviors
Active transportation
Organized sport participation
Active play
Health-related fitness
Family and peers
Schools
Community and the built environment

Additionally, activities are broken into three segments: aerobic activity, muscle strengthening activity and bone-strengthening activity. The most aerobic exercise involves walking or running. Muscle strengthening activity is dominated by climbing and lifting weights. Bone-strengthening includes running and skipping rope.

Geography is another key marker for whether children are likely to reach the benchmarks. States are measured based on the percentage of the residents between ages 6 and 17 that hit the appropriate exercise activity levels. Montana was at the top of the list with at 53%, while Arkansas was at the bottom with 35%.

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United States	46.5
Montana	53.4	1
Kansas	52.6	2
California	51.7	3
Nebraska	51.7	3
North Dakota	51.5	5
New Mexico	51.2	6
Idaho	50.4	7
Colorado	49.8	8
Illinois	49.3	9
Iowa	49.2	10
Vermont	49.1	11
Wisconsin	48.7	12
Oklahoma	48.1	13
Utah	47.4	14
New Hampshire	47.2	15
Nevada	46.4	16
Arizona	46.3	17
Missouri	46.2	18
Massachusetts	45.7	19
Michigan	45.6	20
West Virginia	44.4	21
Tennessee	44.1	22
Connecticut	44.0	23
Delaware	43.5	24
Texas	42.9	25
New York	42.4	26
Pennsylvania	42.4	26
North Carolina	42.3	28
Virginia	42.3	28
Maine	42.2	30
Alaska	41.4	31
Rhode Island	41.3	32
Kentucky	40.6	33
Florida	39.3	34
South Carolina	36.8	35
Hawaii	36.6	36
Louisiana	35.3	37
Maryland	35.2	38
Arkansas	35.1	39
District of Columbia	25.5	40

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.