Many kids don't get enough exercise, particularly in the cold, harsh winter days that we've just experienced. It's a good job that there are active Wii games to encourage physical activity, right? Not according to a new report, which concluded that boxing, dancing and jumping games don't make kids much more active than they would have been with a video game that required only hands!
Researchers from the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas set out to discover if active video games are a viable alternative to outdoor exercise, for instance in cold weather or unsafe neighborhoods. They put this to the test by handing out Wii consoles to 78 children who were not already in possession of one. Half was offered a choice of active games, like Wii Sports or Dance Dance Revolution-Hottest Party 3, while half was given passive games.
All the kids were 9 to 12 years old, and overweight. Halfway through the experiment, they got the chance to pick another game in the same category (passive or active). The team monitored those children with an accelerometer, which registers physical activity, for 13 weeks.
The outcome? Perhaps surprisingly, the accelerometer logs showed that those children who were given active games logged no more active hours than those in the passive games group. Lead researcher Tom Baranowski told Reuters the result of the study was completely unexpected to them too: "We expected that playing the video games would in fact lead to a substantial increase in physical activity in the children. Frankly we were shocked by the complete lack of difference.
The team wasn't sure whether the Wii active games just didn't require a lot of physical movement, or whether the children who were active with the games reduced their activity later during the day! Researchers said that Wii physical activity games could still have the potential to burn more calories than watching TV or playing passive games, but that they are not a good replacement for sports.
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