By Steven John 2020
One of the largest obstacles preventing today’s youth from getting the proper amount of exercise is the glut of time kids now spend staring at screens.
Dr. Nicholas Kardaras, a psychologist and author of the book Glow Kids: How Screen Addiction Is Hijacking Our Kids – And How to Break the Trance told Business Insider: “This modern age of screen time has led to a whole host of clinical and physical disorders and issues in children. We know that increased screen time has led to, according to evidence-based research, increases in ADHD, increased anxiety, cognitive impacts … and we know from a physical standpoint that pediatric obesity and diabetes have also increased based on more screen time.”
The COVID-19 global pandemic only made matters worse. Now, children are not only deprived of the physical education and sports opportunities afforded by their time at school, but they’re also limited in the activities in which they can participate beyond their home.
In order to keep kids active and healthy in the months to come, the solution is to find ways to make exercise at home genuinely fun.
The Little Sports YouTube channel offers dozens of workout routines tailored to kids that promote genuine fitness progress.
Terms like the 30-day challenge or daily calorie burn are usually associated with fitness products aimed at adults, but children can also benefit from some reduced abdominal fat, more calories burned, and fitness goals. The Little Sports YouTube channel features exercise any adult familiar with gym classes (or at-home exercise videos) will recognize, but these targeted courses are taught by computer-animated kids instead of adults.
At the time of this writing, the channel already has dozens of routines posted, most of which range between 15 and 20 minutes, a sweet spot for the attention span of the grade-school-aged child who might exercise with limited supervision. Some of the routines are targeted as noted earlier (abdominal fat) while others are more general, like the 12 Easy Exercises for Kids clip or the Morning Workouts for Kids video.
Jake Tipane of Healthline said the channel has “a wealth of simple workouts made easy to follow [by the] animated guides,” and appreciates the range of times of the videos. He added that “these workouts can be as long as 20 minutes, so parents can select based on the attention spans or even participate with the kids.”
Pros: Targeted content suitable for kids of varying fitness levels, features workouts for with specific goals
Cons: Videos start too abruptly without explanation of expectations
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During the time of COVID, children are kept at home away from the usual outdoor activities that they used to do. Making kids engaged in physical activities is very important for their wellbeing. There aren’t many resources that keep children motivated in doing exercise. Though youtube is a good platform, children don’t stay focus as easily as adults. As the public playground closed and the school remains online, how can we provide a solution in keeping the young generation focusing on their physical education?
