2020/12/11 by Steffen Schmidt, Bastian Anedda, Alexander Burchartz +7 · 1 citation
Health Professions · Medicine · Psychology · #Eating Disorders and Behaviors #Mobile Health and mHealth Applications #Obesity, Physical Activity, Diet
paper · pdf · doi:10.1038/s41598-020-78438-4
openalex publication_date 2020/12/11 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/01
The impact of COVID-19 on social life has been drastic and global. However, the different numbers of cases and different actions in different countries have been leading to various interesting yet unexplored effects on human behavior. In the present study, we compare the physical activity and recreational screen time of a representative sample of 1711 4- to 17-year-olds before and during the strictest time of the first COVID-19 lockdown in Germany. We found that sports activity declined whereas recreational screen time increased. However, a substantial increase in habitual physical activities leads to an overall increase in physical activity among children and adolescents in Germany. The effects differ in size but not in their direction between age groups and are stable for boys and girls. We conclude from this natural experiment that physical activity among children and adolescents is highly context-driven and mutual and does not act as a functional opposite to recreational screen time.