Conclusion

The evidence presented in this free course, The impact of technology on children’s physical activity, illustrates the potential dangers of children accessing a range of technological devices and the health risks of allowing sedentary screen time to exceed the recommended two hours per day.

The main learning points for this course are:

• Children interact with technology in a wide range of ways in today’s digital universe.
• Links between screen time and low levels of physical activity are not clear-cut and warrant further investigation.
• The rise in technology, such as active video games and wearable activity monitoring, as well as health and fitness apps aimed at children, suggests that technology could be encouraging physical activity.
• Technology will continue to develop and its impact on physical activity levels is a growing area of research.
• At the time of writing, there is still insufficient evidence regarding whether the use of technology can encourage the required levels of vigorous activity.

This OpenLearn course is an adapted extract from the Open University course E117 Introduction to sport and fitness [Tip: hold Ctrl and click a link to open it in a new tab. (Hide tip)]