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Is the obesity epidemic the media's fault?

More and more often, I meet kids who regularly do amazing things. On any old Saturday they might fly a plane, win a championship soccer game and climb to the top of an ancient pyramid. Then they'll have some lunch. After that, who knows? Maybe they'll race a car on one of the world's most demanding racetracks, single-handedly build an amusement park, or, if there's time, somehow save the universe by jumping across a series of bottomless chasms.
 
Just hearing about these adventures wears me out. These kids must be physical specimens. And yet it seems like nearly every newspaper I pick up contains an article about rising child obesity rates. A few weeks ago, I read a story on a new study from the University of North Carolina showing that kids are getting fatter because they're getting less exercise. I'm glad the UNC scientists conducted the study, and I'm grateful to the papers for running the story, but the findings of the study weren't news to me. New evidence like this pops up every few weeks, and my own informal findings agree. In fact, many of the very kids who have such grueling Saturdays are the ones who are overweight.
 
By now you've probably guessed where I'm going with all of this. The kids I meet aren't actually performing these amazing acts. Their onscreen personas are. With the incredible hyper-realism of video games, children can explore worlds undreamed of a decade ago. But all too often, the wide world in their own backyards goes unexplored. While onscreen characters with washboard abs do mid-air summersaults, the kids in control are getting a workout too-but only for their thumbs.

As the average American kid's weekly media diet increases-up to over 35 hours a week now-the same kid's weekly amount of physical activity plummets. And, as the UNC study proves, less physical activity usually leads to more body fat. It's simple logic. If you're spending time equivalent to a full time job sitting in front of a video screen, you can't be outside getting the exercise you need.

Video games and other media are so easy to use, it's easy to burn a whole Saturday in front of the screen. The immediate pay-off of electronic media-the hyper-real spectacle and multi-sensory barrage of excitement-can be too seductive to turn down. It's not that kids don't like playing out in the backyard anymore-they probably figure they'll get around to it. But once they start in on their video games, they're hooked, and before they know it, a whole Saturday is gone.

Recently I read another article about an innovative new physical education program in California that is helping kids get fit by playing video games. It sounded impossible, until I read on and found out that while the students' thumbs are busy with control pads, the rest of their bodies are busy with fitness machines like exercycles. I don't think a program like this should completely replace the games kids play in a good old-fashioned gym class, but if it's helping them burn calories, I'm all for it. And I hope when they get home from school, they leave the Playstation alone for a few hours and go play in the yard.

David Walsh, Ph.D. is the president and founder of the National Institute on Media and the Family (www.mediafamily.org). He has written seven books and is a frequent guest on national radio and television.