There couldn’t be a lot of other reasons for lower fitness in kids, right? Not according to the Cult of Climastrology
Climate change causing poorer fitness in children: study
climate change joke
Warming global temperatures — fueled by climate change — are making children less physically fit and more obese than ever before, a new study has found.
And it’s a two-way street: physical fitness is also key to tolerating higher temperatures.
A less active lifestyle caused by higher temperatures is putting kids at greater risk of suffering from heat-related health problems, including dehydration, heat cramps, heat exhaustion and heat stroke, according to the study, published in the journal Temperature on Friday.
“As the world warms, children are the least fit they have ever been,” author Shawnda Morrison, an environmental exercise physiologist at Slovenia’s University of Ljubljana, said in a statement.
“It is imperative that children are encouraged to do daily physical activity to build up, and maintain, their fitness, so that they enjoy moving their bodies and it doesn’t feel like ‘work’ or ‘a chore’ to them,” she added.
If only we could Do Something!
Today’s climate change policies are failing to address child health needs, Morrison argued, stressing the critical nature of encouraging kids to make exercise an everyday part of their lives.
This is a joke, right? Do kids notice the difference between 80F and 81.5F? We’d go outside regardless of the temperatures. We’d be ice skating and sledding when it was super cold. We’d be riding bikes and playing in the woods and all sorts of things when it was hot. Today, it’s that physical fitness is not stressed. In fact, this whole “body positivity” thing is pushed so far to the extreme that it is not only OK to be overweight, and even obese, it’s lauded. Heck, even lots of young kids who aren’t fat look like they haven’t exercised, just no muscle at all, soft and flabby.
New Report Finds U.S. Kids Are Horribly Out of Shape
The National Physical Activity Plan Alliance recently released its 2016 Report Card on Physical Activity for Youth and Children. And the results are dismal.
American children are performing horribly in fitness criteria across the board.
A few of the lowlights include:
- Kids don’t do enough intense activity. Only 43 percent of kids from ages 6 to 11 participate in moderate-to-vigorous physical activity for 60 minutes on five days out of the week. And it gets worse as kids get older. The numbers drop to 8 percent for ages 12 to 15 and 5 percent for ages 16 to 19.
- Kids get too much screen time. Fewer than half of kids spend two hours or less in front of a screen each days. It gets worse as kids get older, dropping to lower than a third.
- Kids are out of shape. Only 50 percent of boys and 34 percent of girls are able to pass cardiorespiratory physical fitness standards.
Kids are not encouraged, or, let’s face it, forced to get outside and exercise anymore. They spend too much time gaming, playing on their phones, taking selfies, doing social media. Even when they’re going outside, it’s to find the perfect spot to take an Instagram photo.
As young children become teenagers, the results get even worse. You can expect that teenagers will drop out of sports as they get older and opportunities to play decrease, but they’re not replacing sports with other physical activity.
Look, I fell into this trap for years, with the rise of the Internet and easy gaming. When I was a kid, I was forced to put the games down and turn the TV off and get exercise. And, mostly, we wanted to go out and play. To surf, fish, bike, sail, all sorts of things. I make sure to get my 10K steps a day and get to the gym at least 4-5 times a week. I can mix reading my books, which I am super-happy to do, with using the treadmill or bike. I’ll even read it on my phone while going for a couple mile walk on the greenway. Kids these days seemingly rarely walk or bike to school. Or do much of anything.
It’s not anthropogenic climate change, or even natural climate change: it’s society and technology.
Read: Your Fault: Kids Have Lower Fitness Due To Climate Crisis (scam) »