Kids in Jakarta have access to technology that their parents couldn’t have dreamed of 20 years ago, like mobile phones that connect to the internet and portable video games with advanced 3D graphics. But all that tech has a high cost – it’s leading to a new generation of lazy couch potato kids who are physically inactive and primed to become unhealthy adults.
That was the warning from sport medicine specialist Dr Andi Kurniawan, who revealed at a press conference yesterday that, out of a sample of 1,000 junior and high schools teenagers surveyed in Jakarta, around 80 percent were not physically fit.
“Out of all of the middle and high-school aged teenagers in Jakarta, 74 percent of them spend more than two hours a day in front of television screens or playing games on their gadget,” said Dr Andi Kurniawan, at a press conference in Jakarta as quoted by CNN Indonesia.
Ade said that fitness and lifestyle habits were especially important for teenagers because those habits tend to be carried into adulthood.
The doctor then described WHO data that showed lack of physical activity is the fourth leading cause of death in the world, after hypertension, diabetes, and smoking.
Ade said teenagers should be physically active for at least 60 minutes a day. “Unfortunately, kids today just do it once a week, and even then it’s in PE class,” said Ade.
The event, said Ade, should be integrated with other subjects. “For example, in biology or physics research activities that can be inserted using all the gestures,” said Ade.
