Active video games don’t mean kids exercise more
At weeks one, six, seven and 12, kids in the active game group got an average of 25 to 28 minutes of moderate or vigorous physical activity each day - compared to between 26 and 29 minutes in the inactive video game group.
There was also no difference in minutes spent doing light physical activity or being sedentary during any week the researchers monitored, they reported Monday in the journal Pediatrics.
“We expected that playing the video games would in fact lead to a substantial increase in physical activity in the children,” Baranowski told Reuters Health.
“Frankly we were shocked by the complete lack of difference.”
Giving kids a Nintendo Wii may not be the answer to childhood obesity, according to a trial that found no boost in physical activity after children received the console with active games.
Their physical activity levels in the first 12 weeks were the same as children given a Wii with traditional sedentary video games, Tom Baranowski, PhD, of Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, and colleagues reported in the March issue of Pediatrics.
In prior trials, active gaming has been shown to encourage kids to break a sweat, but benefits seen under laboratory conditions may not pan out in the child’s own home, the group noted.
“Although children can do moderate or vigorous physical activity with active video games in laboratory settings, they either did not elect to play the provided games at that level of intensity or compensated for the increased intensity by being less active at other times in the day,” the group concluded.
Baranowski said his team couldn’t tell if kids just didn’t end up exerting much energy playing the active games, or if they compensated for exercise they got playing Wii with less exercise at other points in the day.
Though the results represent a single experiment and aren’t definitive, he said, “Our study indicates that there’s no public health benefit from having those active video games.”
Nintendo was not available for comment before deadline.
It’s still possible that kids playing active Wii games burned a few extra calories during their gaming sessions that the movement device didn’t pick up on - for instance, if they were moving their arms a lot in a boxing game, Barkley said.
Over the course of a year, he said, playing an active instead of totally inactive video game could translate into a couple extra pounds of weight loss - or fewer pounds of weight gain.
“Maybe the Wii isn’t going to increase physical activity a whole heck of a lot,” Barkley told Reuters Health. “But it might increase caloric expenditure a little bit more than a traditional sedentary video game, and if you do that on a daily basis that could have a cumulative effect that might be beneficial.”
Kevin Short, who has studied exercise and video games at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center in Oklahoma City, agreed.