Short and medium-term effects of the COVID-19 lockdowns on child and parent accelerometer-measured physical activity and sedentary time: a natural experiment

Abstract

Background The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in marked impacts on children’s physical activity, with large reductions in moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) reported during lockdowns. Previous evidence showed children’s activity levels were lower and sedentary time higher immediately post-COVID lockdown, while there was little change in parental physical activity. We need to know if these patterns persist. Methods Active-6 is a natural experiment using repeated cross-sectional data conducted in two waves. Accelerometer data were collected on 393 children aged 10–11 and their parents from 23 schools in Wave 1 (June 2021-December 2021), and 436 children and parents from 27 schools in Wave 2 (January 2022-July 2022). These were compared to a pre-COVID-19 comparator group (March 2017-May 2018) of 1,296 children and parents in the same schools. Mean minutes of accelerometer-measured MVPA and sedentary time were derived for week- and weekend-days and compared across waves via linear multilevel models. We also analysed the date of data collection as a time series, to explore temporal patterns via generalised additive mixed models. Results There was no difference in children’s mean MVPA in Wave 2 (weekdays: -2.3 min; 95% CI: -5.9, 1.3 and weekends: 0.6 min; 95% CI: -3.5, 4.6) when compared to the pre-COVID-19 data. Sedentary time remained higher than pre-pandemic by 13.2 min (95% CI:5.3, 21.1) on weekdays. Differences compared to pre-COVID-19 changed over time, with children’s MVPA decreasing over winter, coinciding with COVID-19 outbreaks, and only returning to pre-pandemic levels towards May/June 2022. Parents’ sedentary time and weekday MVPA was similar to pre-COVID-19 levels, with MVPA higher than pre-pandemic by 7.7 min (95% CI: 1.4, 14.0) on weekends. Conclusion After an initial drop, children’s MVPA returned to pre-pandemic levels by July 2022, while sedentary time remained higher. Parents’ MVPA remained higher, especially at weekends. The recovery in physical activity is precarious and potentially susceptible to future COVID-19 outbreaks or changes in provision, and so robust measures to protect against future disruptions are needed. Furthermore, many children are still inactive, with only 41% meeting UK physical activity guidelines, and so there is still a need to increase children’s physical activity.

The status of active after-school clubs among primary school children in England (UK) after the COVD-19 lockdowns: implications for policy and practice

“…Active-6 quantitative methods have been published in detail elsewhere [ 12 , 15 ]. In short, B-Proact1v was a five-year longitudinal study of children and their parents/carers.…”

“…To evaluate the impact of the pandemic on children’s physical activity in England, we developed the Active-6 project, adopting a repeated cross-sectional natural experiment design which compared an existing pre-pandemic dataset of children aged 10–11 years’ physical activity levels collected in 2017/18 to new data collected during/after the pandemic [ 12 – 19 ]. Findings from this project suggest that, after a short-term drop in 2021, average children’s MVPA had recovered to pre-pandemic levels by mid-2022, although weekday sedentary time remained elevated by around 13 min per day [ 15 , 20 ]. Despite this recovery, it is important to highlight that the majority of children (59%) in the study still did not meet physical activity guidelines [ 15 ].…”

“…Findings from this project suggest that, after a short-term drop in 2021, average children’s MVPA had recovered to pre-pandemic levels by mid-2022, although weekday sedentary time remained elevated by around 13 min per day [ 15 , 20 ]. Despite this recovery, it is important to highlight that the majority of children (59%) in the study still did not meet physical activity guidelines [ 15 ]. We also observed a greater dependence on structured activities (that is, those that are organised and planned into the family’s schedule, e.g.…”

The COVID-19 pandemic has increased health inequalities by altering patterns of engagement with a mass participation event after resumption post-lockdown

“…Variation in levels of physical activity have been found to be driving health inequalities highlighting the importance of tracking levels of activity and identifying correlates of activity among populations [1][2][3]. The COVID-19 pandemic had a major impact on levels of physical activity [4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15]. Among the identified impacts of lockdown is an avoidance of larger events found in runners in Greece [4].…”

“…This leaves a key question. If lockdown impacted the demographics of those engaging in physical exercise do those impacts extend into the post-lockdown era [10]? Large-scale studies investigating changes in the patterns of exercising are urgently needed to address this question [12].…”