Promotion of Healthy Nutrition and Physical Activity Lifestyles for Teenagers: A Systematic Literature Review of The Current Methodologies

Abstract

Amid obesity problems in the young population and apparent trends of spending a significant amount of time in a stationary position, promoting healthy nutrition and physical activities to teenagers is becoming increasingly important. It can rely on different methodologies, including a paper diary and mobile applications. However, the widespread use of mobile applications by teenagers suggests that they could be a more suitable tool for this purpose. This paper reviews the methodologies for promoting physical activities to healthy teenagers explored in different studies, excluding the analysis of different diseases. We found only nine studies working with teenagers and mobile applications to promote active lifestyles, including the focus on nutrition and physical activity. Studies report using different techniques to captivate the teenagers, including questionnaires and gamification techniques. We identified the common features used in different studies, which are: paper diary, diet diary, exercise diary, notifications, diet plan, physical activity registration, gamification, smoking cessation, pictures, game, and SMS, among others.

The Role of Physical Activity and School Physical Education in Enhancing School Satisfaction and Life Satisfaction

“…However, in order to generate this level of student satisfaction, the PE teacher must motivate the students in class [ 87 , 88 ]. This would be a good strategy to change the trend of increasing unhealthy habits among adolescents [ 89 ], since correct motivation and awareness is a very useful tool to generate change [ 90 , 91 ]. As an incentive to the practice of PA, previous studies have suggested implementing and encouraging more frequent and of higher intensity PA subjects, coupled with extra-curricular sports programs [ 92 ].…”

Nivel de actividad física, consumo habitual de tabaco y alcohol, y su relación con la calidad de vida en adolescentes españoles (Physical activity level, tobacco and alcohol habitual consumption, and its relationship with quality of life in Spanish adol

“…Los datos del estudio de Ruiz-Risueño et al (2012), en línea con lo indicado anteriormente por Mulassi et al (2010), mostraron que el consumo de tabaco era un potente predictor para el consumo de alcohol, confirmando la tendencia a un consumo simultáneo de ambas sustancias siendo dentro de la familia, los hermanos y los padres, los familiares que mayor influencia ejercen en su consumo; y sugieren que ser físicamente activo ejerce un papel protector ante conductas no saludables. Aspecto este último que ha sido confirmado posteriormente (Espejo, et al, 2017;Villasana, et al 2020) y sobre el cual ya advirtieron Ruiz-Juan et al (2014) al indicar que son las personas sedentarias y las que abandonan la práctica habitual de AF las que presentan una mayor probabilidad (hasta el doble de riesgo) de tener un consumo de riesgo y alto riesgo con respecto a la cantidad de alcohol ingerido. Si bien se ha sugerido que no es la realización de AF o deporte en sí sino factores motivacionales asociados a estas prácticas los que podrían ejercer efectos protectores frente al consumo de sustancias nocivas (Schmidt, et al, 2019).…”

“…La adopción de conductas no saludables entre los más jóvenes no solo se está incrementando, sino que se está estableciendo a edades cada vez más tempranas (D'Amico et al, 2020). Las conductas que se instauran en la adolescencia como fumar, beber alcohol, alimentarse de frutas y verduras o realizar ejercicio físico suelen perdurar en el tiempo y en cualquier caso resultan difíciles de modificar; por consiguiente, si la conducta adquirida no es saludable se necesita de un elevado nivel de concienciación y motivación para modificarla más adelante (Ortega, Ruiz & Castillo, 2013;Villasana, et al, 2020); especialmente si los jóvenes asocian estos comportamientos a factores tales como el consumo de otras drogas recreacionales, las relaciones de afinidad o la búsqueda de sensaciones (Latorre, Cámara & García, 2014;Mulassi, Borracci, Calderón, Vinay & Mulassi, 2012).…”

Promotion of Healthy Lifestyles to Teenagers with Mobile Devices: A Case Study in Portugal

“…To understand which methodologies are used worldwide to captivate young people to have healthy living habits, and educate them using mobile applications, a review of the studies available in the literature was performed and published in [31], using the Natural Language Processing (NLP)-based framework for an automatic search in digital libraries and identifying relevant studies [32]. It was verified that all the analyzed studies use questionnaires as an evaluation method, mainly promoted using mobile applications to promote healthy habits, including nutrition and physical activity habits.…”