When real-world exercise makes your avatar stronger

Only seven per cent of Canadian kids get the recommended 60 minutes of daily physical activity but U of T researchers say video games could help change that - particularly for sedentary girls.

A study overseen by Professor Guy Faulkner of the Faculty of Kinesiology and Physical Education and conducted by Concerned Children's Advertisers (CCA) equipped 128 boys and 125 girls, aged nine to 11, with pedometers that tracked the number of steps they took in one day. Participants were divided into five groups according to their average daily step counts, ranging from lowest to highest. 

For the next four weeks, each child wore the pedometer and was given a personal avatar that used their accumulated steps to travel within a virtual world via the game GOGOYU; the more steps a child took in a day, the more power she had online.

Researchers found that 69 per cent of the girls who had the lowest level of physical activity at the start of the study moved up at least one category and logged an increase in daily step counts ranging from 1,000 to over 11,000 steps. The combined daily step count average for all boys and girls increased by 13 per cent during game play. 

But none of the boys increased their steps enough to move categories.

Experts say that while there’s no one-size-fits-all solution to combating youth inactivity, the findings expand the breadth of options available to tackle the problem and highlight a need to explore more gender-based interventions.

“The more tools we have, the better we’ll be able to reach a broader range of kids,” says Michelle Brownrigg, U of T’s director of physical activity and equity, who was an adviser for the study.

Phase two of the study will be held next year in northern Ontario where researchers will look for ways that integrating online gaming and physical activity may impact behaviour there.

Earlier this year, Faculty of Kinesiology and Physical Education researchers published a study in The Canadian Journal of Public Health that monitored the activity levels of almost 900 students in 16 elementary schools. Not one of the students monitored met the provincial government requirement for 20 minutes of sustained moderate to vigorous physical activity every day, researchers reported. (Read more about that study here.)