A Quarter of Teenagers Did Not Manage One Active Hour on Any Day Last Week

About 240 million adolescents aged 11 to 17 — roughly a quarter of the world's total — did not manage an hour of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity on a single day in the past week, according to a World Health Organization report published on 4 November.

The study, in the Lancet Global Health, pools 389 surveys from 140 countries covering more than 3.2 million young people. On average they were active enough on 2.7 days a week; only 14% managed all seven. Sixty minutes a day is the WHO's own recommendation for this age group.

“In the past 15 years there has been almost no progress,” said WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, adding that the situation for girls is especially concerning. He argued that asking adolescents to try harder is not a strategy: schools, streets and neighbourhoods have to become places where daily activity is safe and convenient.

The gender gap is persistent and wide. Twenty-eight per cent of girls reported no day at all with 60 minutes of activity, against 22% of boys; 11% of girls met the target every day, against 17% of boys. In almost every country surveyed, and in every WHO region, girls were less active than boys.

The stakes are not abstract. Physical inactivity is a significant risk factor for heart disease, type 2 diabetes and some cancers, and habits formed in adolescence tend to persist into adulthood.

The causes are plural, and mostly environmental: where young people live and study, how they travel, whether public space is safe, whether walking and cycling are practical, what activities cost, what is socially expected of them, and how much of the day goes to screens. None of those is a matter of willpower.