Getting Back to the Great Outdoors

Over the past few years there has been an increasing concern about the environment about childhood obesity. Amy Novotney, in her article “Getting Back to the Great Outdoors” combines these concerns about children’s obesity and their eventual impact on the environment. She states that children need to start connecting more with Mother Earth. There are many reasons to connect children with Mother Earth. There are benefits to children’s physical, cognitive, and emotional well-being. Childhood obesity is on the rise. Novotney, and others, suggest that if children spend more time outside than inside, this could lead to lowered obesity among children. Spending time outside can also reduce stress and improve concentration. Finally, Novotney suggests that if children are more interested and exposed to Mother Nature, they will end up caring for the Earth more. For the remainder of this paper, we will analyze the relationships between television watching and video game playing with children’s Body Mass Index. We will also look at the benefits of outdoor play and exercise among children and adults.

Novotney suggests that children spending less time outside increases time spent inside. She references Sandra Hoffeth’s study of that showed between 1997 and 2003, the amount of children aged 9 – 12 spent participating in outdoor activities such as hiking, horseback riding, fishing, camping, and gardening declined by 50 %. Novoteny also references a 2004 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey that found one-third of children and teens, ages 2 – 19 were overweight or at risk of becoming overweight. According to the International Journal of Pediatric Obesity, by 2010, about half of school age children in North and South America will be overweight or obese. Novotney states when children are inside they are playing video games, watching TV and spending more time on the computer. She says that these activities are, of course, linked to childhood obesity.

We wanted to find more about the actual correlation between watching television, playing video games and childhood obesity. We were interested in the numbers, not the statements. We found two articles. Both state that the World Health Organization considers obesity to be a global epidemic. The first article, “Relationships between media use, body fatness and physical activity in children and youth: a meta-analysis” attempts to make sense of many other studies done by researchers and combine them – a meta-analysis. All of the studies researched were from these databases; PsychInfo, SportsDiscus, MedLine, and Ingenta. The studies were restricted to those published after 1985 and only the studies with participants less than 18 years old were included. The study included a Body Fatness measure of Body Mass Index and a skin fold test. They then measured how much TV a child was watching by using a self-report, parent report, and a direct observation. They used studies of just boys, and just girls, and then mixed studies. Finally, they combined different age groups. The study concluded that there is a statistically small relationship between TV viewing and body fatness among children and youth. They concluded that what they found contrasted many reports that stated the relationship was strong and conclusive. The conclusion of this study discusses the many variables of TV viewing and obesity. These include; the consumption of energy-dense snacks during television watching, and the context of behavior is lost, meaning is it television watching or is it just plain sedentary behavior. Finally, the article states that more experimental research is needed to replicate these findings. However, this will be difficult because the relationship between sedentary behavior and health are not limited to TV viewing or video/computer game use.

The second article: “Television, computer use and body mass index in Australian primary school children” is a cross-sectional study done in Victoria, Australia for children aged 5 – 13. They examined the relationships between child BMI and parent reports of children’s television viewing, video game and computer habits and took into account some variables. The sample consisted of 24 government, Catholic, and independent schools testing one random class a year – grade 1, 2 etc... The subjects were those for whom height, weight, and parent questionnaire data that was available, an end result of 2862 children. The children’s BMI was tested, parents reported how many hours a school day versus non-school day TV was watched and video/computer games were used, how many out of school take away meals per week, sociodemographic information, maternal and paternal employment status, country of birth, and the parents BMI. They found that weekly hours of television viewing accounted for only 1% of the total variance in mean BMI scores and video/computer game use accounted for only 0.2% in mean BMI score. Video game use could account for less than viewing television because there is no advertising for food or because their hands are not free like they are with television viewing. They found a much higher correlation between a child being obese and their parents being obese than a child being obese because of how much television he/she watched. They also found that food intake was much more strongly correlated to BMI than TV viewing and video/computer game use, in particular, take-away food. The study concluded that television is only one small factor in the global epidemic of obesity. If a child has an overweight parent, they are far more likely to be obese than if they watch too much television. This brings up the genetic factor of obesity. They suggest that broad approaches are needed to understand the multi-factored nature of obesity.

We believe that both of these journal articles are based on fact. They falsify the general statement that time spent watching television directly leads to obesity. We believe it is easier for researchers, among others, to blame television for obesity. As the article suggests, We believe there needs to be much more research in the study of obesity. We don’t think researchers are going to get much information by just studying the relationship between television watching and obesity. We do think that genetics plays a large part in obesity. We also think that lifestyle does. Many people who watch a lot of TV also participate in sports. We think obesity depends on the balance of television watching and outdoor activities. We believe that watching television can be educational and as long as there is a balance between physical activity and computer use /video game playing/ television watching there will not be a problem. We also think that this balance is up to the parents when children are younger and that is obviously hard to control.

Novotney addresses the psychological and physical benefits of outdoor play. The benefits include reduced stress, improved concentration, more creativity, and greater physical health.
In the article “Psychological Benefits of Exercise Paired with Virtual Reality: Outdoor Exercise Energizes Whereas Indoor Virtual Exercise Relaxes” the authors studied one hundred and twelve introductory psychology students who were randomly assigned to one of three 20 min experimental conditions. These conditions included; (a) taking a brisk walk outside, (b) walking on a laboratory treadmill combined with a virtual reality video presentation of the same college campus walk, or (c) viewing the virtual reality walk without participating in any actual exercise. There were three measures. First, the Activation-Deactivation Adjective Checklist which is a self-report to measure moods such as energy, calmness, tension, and tiredness. Second, the Paces Activity Enjoyment Scale, which measures the amount of enjoyment individuals perceive themselves to have during the exercise. Finally, the Marlowe Crowne Social Desirability Scale, a true or false test of social desirability. The results show that outdoor physical exercise increased energy levels, was more enjoyable, and affects well-being, confidence, enjoyment, mood, and self-efficacy. The results were more predominant in female than in males.

The most interesting article we found was “The Natural Environment as a Playground for Children: The Impact of Outdoor Play Activities in Pre-Primary School Children”. The researchers studied five to seven year old children in Telemark, Norway. The experimental group of 46 children had free play and versatile activities in the forest next to the kindergarten every day for 1 – 2 hours. The reference group was 29 children who used a traditional outdoor playground outside their kindergarten for 1 – 2 hours a day and only visited natural outdoor settings occasionally. They tested the children using the EUROFIT: European Test of Physical Fitness, the Motor Fitness Test. This tests balance, strength, endurance, coordination, speed, agility, and flexibility. The results were very interesting. For example, one of the ways they tested balance was called the “Flamingo test”. The children stood on one foot for 30 seconds and were tested on how many instabilities occurred prior to outdoor play for nine months, and then after outdoor play for nine months. The experimental group had 3.2 less instabilities than before the 9-month experiment whereas the reference group had only 0.7 less stabilities than prior to the test. Another test was the bent arm hang. For this test, children would maintain a bent arm while hanging from a bar, testing their strength. The experimental group could hold themselves up for 4.4 more seconds than they previously could. The reference group could hold themselves up for 2.8 more seconds that previously. The results state that there were significant improvements in balance and coordination abilities of the experimental group. This results in children mastering their own bodies and knowing themselves.

To conclude, we have found out that obesity is now considered a global epidemic. To cure this epidemic we should not study the effects of television watching and computer/video game playing on children’s obesity. We should continue to study the positive effects of spending time outside and children development in all areas – physical, cognitive, emotional, and social. How much can a child learn if you stick them under a fluorescent light and tell them what to do? We believe children can learn much more from interacting with the natural outdoor environment – this would also be much more beneficial to their BMI.