مقاله انگلیسی رایگان در مورد ارزیابی نگرش والدین در مورد استفاده و تأثیر فناوری بر بدن کودکان – الزویر 2021

Highlights

Abstract

Keywords

1. Introduction

2. Methods

3. Results

4. Discussion

5. Conclusion

Ethical Approval

Consent

Funding

Author contribution

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Declaration of competing interest

Acknowledgements

Appendix A. Supplementary data

References

Abstract

Aim
The aim of this study was to evaluate parental attitudes to the use and effects of technology on physical activity levels of children aged 7 to 11.

Methods
A web-based questionnaire was completed by parents of 7–11 year-old children who had access to technological devices. Pearson’s chi-square test was used to determine if there were differences based on child’s gender or parental occupation. Themes were identified and evaluated using content analysis.

Results
There were 197 respondents providing information on 231 children. Children commonly had access to at least 3 devices at home. 53.3% of respondents did not feel that technology use had an impact on the physical activity of their children compared to 46.8% who thought it had a negative effect. There were no difference based on child’s gender or parent occupation.

Conclusions
Most parents do not believe that technology use negatively impacts upon their child’s physical activity and suggest that enjoyment of physical activity and setting access rules account for this. However, a substantial number believe it has a negative impact and suggest less access to technology would result in an increase to activity levels. Technological interventions that include restrictive mediation approaches and strategies to enhance physical literacy may be beneficial.

1. Introduction

The department of Health and Social Care (Department of Health and Social Care, 2019) define physical activity as bodily movement produced by skeletal muscles that requires energy expenditure. It can take many forms, occurs in many, and has many purposes including daily activity, recreation and sport. Current guidelines recommended that children and young people participate in at least 60 minutes of physical activity a day (Department of Health and Social CareHealth Do, 2019). However Only 48.7% of children in England (Sport England, 2019a), 38% in Scotland (Bardsley et al., 2018), 51% in wales (The National Assembly for Wales, 2019) and 11.9% in Northern Ireland (Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency, 2018) met these recommendations. This problem is not restricted to the UK, as low levels of physical activity has been shown to be a global crisis which will likely continue to worsen (Guthold et al., 2018), driven by widening income inequality (Tomkinson et al., 2019). As a result, it is possible that the current generation of children may have a higher risk of developing non-communicable diseases that significantly impact on quality of life and risks premature death (Nechuta et al., 2015).

Currently, there is no consensus on the most effective way to increase childhood physical activity, despite a significant amount of published research. Research has shown that technology can reduce the impact of some key barriers to accessing healthcare (Jansen-Kosterink et al., 2016). A review of the use of technological interventions to improve physical activity suggested they offer 12–25% greater improvement in physical activity levels compared to non-technology interventions in adults; there were no difference between interactive, non-interactive or self-monitoring technologies (Hakala et al., 2016). This may provide an opportunity to draw on technological solutions in future behaviour change interventions to improve childhood physical activity, however, this has not yet been widely studied.