Lack of play sees serious slump in children’s physical abilities
EXCLUSIVE: The physical decline of Aussie kids has been laid bare by alarming research showing they are losing the ability to jump and are among the world’s worst at throwing, kicking and running.
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EXCLUSIVE: The physical decline of Aussie kids has been laid bare by alarming research showing they are losing the ability to jump and are among the world’s worst at throwing, kicking and running.
Today’s primary school children can’t jump as far as children were able to in 1985 — falling short by an average of 16.4cm, a major study has found. The deterioration is evident across gender and age divides even when factoring in the heavier weight of modern children compared with 30 years ago.
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A separate national report into children’s skills — which scores Aussie kids a “D plus” for movement — reveals Year 6 boys and girls have extremely low levels of “mastery” in what used to be normal outdoor activities such as throwing overarm, catching, leaping and kicking.
Experts have blamed rise of screen time at the expense of free play time and childhood activities and games that build muscular strength.
Kindergarten-age kids today probably don’t even know how to play hopscotch, experts said.
The study into jumping abilities, called The Great Leap Backwards, looked at how far 4000 Australian children aged 11 and 12 could jump in 2015 and compared them to counterparts in 1985.
Kids were asked to leap as far as they could while standing, with the best of three attempts recorded. When researchers checked results they were amazed at the decline in three decades.
In 1985, Year 6 boys could leap 151.5cm, but this had fallen to 133.5cm in the latest study. For girls the distance fell from 141.9cm to 127cm.
One of study’s authors, Professor Grant Tomkinson, formerly of the University of South Australia, said the researchers even factored in that today’s children had more body fat than previous generations. The decline still averaged 11.1cm.
“When we balance everything out and take a kid from 2015 and their ‘like’ peer from 1985 — a kid of the same age, sex and body size — today’s kids don’t have as much muscular strength,” he said.
Extra weight and too much time spent on computers are not the only reason for the decline. Also cited were, restrictions on children freely running around and smaller or non-existent backyards. While organised sports are good, experts say children still need plenty of free play time for rough and tumble activities as well.
“We need children to be motivated to play actively in their free time,” says Dr Louise Barnett, from the Institute for Physical Activity and Nutrition. “Screen time is taking away time that 20 or 30 years ago was spent playing outside, in the backyard or street.
“They played with siblings or older neighbours and had a lot of opportunities to practise, but now they are not getting that, so it makes today’s structured opportunities like PE even more important.”
Researchers from the Active Healthy Kids Global Alliance ended a conference late last year with an urgent call for “immediate action” to arrest the declining physical skills of Australian children.
Their national report found only 30 per cent of girls were able to show mastery in running, 33 per cent in the vertical jump, 13 per cent in kicking, 14 per cent in overarm throwing and 49 per cent in catching.
For boys, kicking mastery was at 50 per cent, overarm throws at 53 per cent and catching at 59 per cent. But leaping was just 13 per cent, running 32 per cent, and vertical jumps 32 per cent.
In children’s overall physical activity, Australia ranked 32nd out of 49 countries.
“We need immediate action in order to get our kids moving more every day,” the report said. “They need to engage in activities that will get them ‘huffing and puffing’ as well as strengthening and developing their muscles and bones to ensure they are healthy heading into adulthood.”
Netball NSW Participation Manager Shohan Khan said coaches were noticing the decline in gross motor skills among children who were playing the game.
“We’re noticing that skills and physical, gross motor skills are reducing,” Mr Khan said. “It’s not like it used to be in years gone by. “The research is showing the kids are maybe one or two years behind where they were a decade ago.
Sydney University researcher Dr Louise Hardy said physical activity levels had a direct bearing on children’s health later in life.
“We know that the more muscle you have the greater benefit of reducing your risk of cardio metabolic conditions like diabetes and heart disease,” she said.
“If a child does acquire these skills we know they are more likely to go on and be physically active in adolescence and if you’re active then you have a greater chance of being a physically active adult.”
Dr Louise Barnett, from the Institute for Physical Activity and Nutrition, said simple games such as hopscotch that built motor skills were disappearing.
“I don’t know how many kindergarten girls actually play hopscotch or even know the term,” she said.
Rather, hopscotch is better known as a coding program that some education departments use to teach children to build apps for games to play on a phone.
Dr Barnett said research shows children with better fundamental skills are more fit and had higher physical activity levels as adults.
“We’re really just talking about an underhand catch with two hands, a basic throw, for some of these skills being measured — they are not fancy elite type sport skills,” she said. “But research has shown these ball skills were predictive of health down the track.”
Her advice was to allow children to do as many activities as possible because even if they are not good at them, they later rate themselves as better at skills and are more inclined to participate.
Originally published as Lack of play sees serious slump in children’s physical abilities
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