According to alarming new statistics, 75% of American teenagers don’t exercise sufficiently. Interestingly, University of Georgia researchers claim that teenage girls are particularly prone to inactivity.
Lead author of the study Janani R. Thapa, an associate professor of health policy and management at the College of Public Health at the University of Georgia, stated that it had been found that the duration of breaktime, physical facilities, and social situations at schools have an impact on physical exercise among students.
According to Prof. Thapa, they do not fully understand how school climate affects physical activity. There must’ve been obstacles that specific student groups had to overcome. So, we decided to look into the gender difference.
These results come from a state-wide poll that included more than 360,000 Georgia high school students. Researchers questioned each student about their fitness routines and the general environment at their schools. More precisely, the data covered peer victimization (bullying), physical environment, peer social support, adult social support, school connectivity, cultural acceptance, school safety, and support environment.
Georgia recently put into place regulations and initiatives meant to boost physical exercise in K–12 settings. Prof. Thapa noted that while physical activity levels have decreased among all teenagers with time, this tendency is more likely to affect female middle and high school pupils.
The research team made the assumption that the environment of the school has a significant impact on how comfortable children feel participating in athletics or other forms of physical activity.
Female teenagers reported engaging in less physical exercise (35%) than their male peers (57%). Interestingly, both genders had a decrease in physical activity frequency from the ninth to the twelfth grades.
Despite this tendency, both female and male students typically ended up exercising more when a school’s environment was particularly supportive of physical activity.
The element of bullying came out as one to note. Bullied teenage girls were more inclined to exercise than bullied teenage boys, while the reverse was true.