Get Up. We Sit Too Much

Just when you thought Americans had learned the value of exercise, along comes a study showing that the amount of time that most of us spend sitting down is increasing, not decreasing. Washington University in St. Louis reports the researchers at the school found that total daily sitting time increased among adolescents and adults from 2007 to 2016, from seven hours per day to just over eight for teenagers, and from 5.5 hours per day to almost 6.5 for adults. Yes, it’s a lot. And those numbers are based on an analysis of surveys of 51,000 people that tracked sitting trends in front of TVs and computers and the total amount of time spent sitting on a daily basis. 

A Wash U news release reports that most Americans spend at least two hours per day sitting and watching television or videos. Among children ages 5-11, 62 percent spent at least that long in front of screens daily. For adolescents ages 12-19, that number was 59 percent. About 65 percent of adults ages 20 to 64 spent at least two hours watching television per day. And most recently, from 2015 to 2016, 84 percent of adults over age 65 spent at least that much time sitting watching television. Across all age groups, 28 percent to 38 percent of those surveyed spent at least three hours per day watching television or videos, and 13 percent to 23 percent spent four hours or more engaged in watching television or videos.