One in four teenagers worldwide never exercises

A report by the World Health Organization puts a precise figure behind a phenomenon affecting the youngest people across the planet: 24.9% of adolescents aged 11 to 17 had not engaged in a single day of physical activity in the week preceding the survey. Nearly one in four adolescents, in other words, reports zero days of movement out of seven.

The figure is based on a large sample: more than 3.2 million young people involved across 140 different countries, a scale that makes the report one of the most extensive dedicated to physical activity in adolescence at a global level. The age range examined, 11-17 years, covers the period in which, according to the organization, movement habits destined to continue into adulthood become established.

The news currently comes from a single source available in the material gathered; there is no independent confirmation of the data collection methodology in individual countries, nor of any regional differences within the overall sample. The report describes a snapshot of the week preceding the survey, not a continuous measurement over time, and does not on its own allow for a comparison with previous surveys, nor does it make it possible to isolate the effect of factors such as school context or access to spaces for movement.

The WHO figure comes at a time when the organization is publishing several reports on the relationship between lifestyles and public health on a global scale, offering a picture concerning the 11-17 age group across 140 different countries, with no distinction by geographic area in the figures made available. The possibility therefore remains open, in the material disseminated so far, of subsequent breakdowns by continent or by country, which would make it possible to understand whether the global 24.9% figure conceals significant differences between the various regions of the world.