EDMONTON – In the days of PlayStation, Xbox, tablets and smartphones, it’s no surprise many children aren’t getting as much physical activity as they should.
“If we weren’t here doing this today, we’d probably be in our home where there’s a TV,” said mother-of-two Randi Bond, who took her children to Café O’Play, an indoor play centre, Friday afternoon.
Recent studies show the average Canadian child spends as many as eight hours in front of a screen per day, and anywhere from four to six of those hours are after school.
It’s because of those alarming numbers, ParticipACTION has launched a new campaign, geared at getting families to bring back play.
“We need to reduce our sedentary time,” said Brian Torrance with ParticipACTION. “We need to unplug all our technical distractions in our life and we need to get outdoors and be more active and play.”
Gone are the days of Body Break, with Hal Johnson and Joanne McLeod coming up with different types of activities to keep being active fun. Nowadays, the advertisements are geared more towards simply getting people off the couch.
Through its latest campaign, ParticipACTION is urging families to ‘Unplug & Play’ for 60 minutes every day.
“Our life has changed. Our suburbs have changed. Our work environment has changed,” said Torrance. “We need to be cautious of that and make sure that we are getting away from our day-to-day distractions, which are technology and screens, and to get out and be active.”
And Torrance says it can be as easy as heading to a local park.
“It doesn’t always have to structured and it doesn’t have to have that financial barrier of organized sport. Getting out onto walking paths, getting out onto playgrounds, getting out onto winter activities such as ice skating.”
Bond knows how important physical activity is for overall health, and says starting to encourage it at a young age is really important.
“Activity is important for everybody, but I think for the children especially, so that they – from a young age – they know to be active and it helps with their health,” she explained. “I think it’s important to unplug, to do something, to be active, to be physical. And that’s learning and growing too, right? They can’t really learn in front of the TV the way that, I guess, we would want them to.”
For more information on the ‘Unplug & Play’ campaign, visit ParticipACTION’s website.
With files from Laurel Gregory, Global News.
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