Correlates of sedentary behaviors in Austrian children and adolescents

A large proportion of children and adolescents spend their leisure time with predominantly sedentary pursuits and do not reach the WHO physical activity recommendations. As there remains limited research on specific sedentary behaviors in Austrian children and adolescents, we investigated time spent sitting and the utilization of various media during school days and the weekend in 6- to 15-year-old schoolchildren. Data for this cross-sectional study were collected in Spring 2022 with a standardized questionnaire that was based on the “Heidelberger Questionnaire for the Assessment of Sitting Behavior in Children and Adolescents”. Questions examined the frequency and duration of different sedentary behaviors separately for weekdays and weekends. A total of 2061 students were included in the analyses. Various factors, including school grade, sex, or recreational behavior, were implemented in a multifactorial ANOVA accounting for 1st order interactions. The mean sitting time of children and adolescents of all eight school grades was 10.4 ± 1.7 hours, with 56.7% associated with school. A significant increase in sitting time was observed from 1st grade (10.0 ± 1.3 h) to 8th grade (12.3 ± 1.2 h; p < 0.01), while sleep duration decreased with increasing age (p < 0.01). Media use was 1.2 ± 0.7 h in 1st grade and increased to 3.2 ± 1.2 h by 8th grade (p < 0.01). Physical activity decreased from 4.5 ± 1.4 h to 3.6 ± 1.0 h during the same period. While the increase in sitting time on weekdays was at the expense of sleep duration, the increase in sitting time on weekend days was at the expense of time spent in physical activity. In summary, there was a substantial increase in sedentary time from 1st to 8th grade, with school-related sedentary time accounting for the largest proportion, followed by a large increase in time spent with electronic media with increasing age. In addition, high sedentary time may come at the expense of sufficient sleep time, which further emphasizes the need to address sedentary behavior and sleep as important health correlates.