1. SCHOOLS CONTRIBUTION TO THE UNHEALTHY ADOLESCENT 1
The Schools Contribution To Young Adolescents Health and Well-Being
Rachel Greenwall
HDFS 3700
April 7, 2016

2. SCHOOLS CONTRIBUTION TO THE UNHEALTHY ADOLESCENT 2
Abstract
Early adolescence is a term used to include children between 9 and 13 years of age.
During this stage in life, a key developmental time period, these children spend the majority of
their awake time, at school. That being said, school has a very large impact on children. With the
childhood obesity rate increasing exponentially and the overall health and well-being of our
nations youth declining, it is important to track down a root source of the issue. Schools should
be in place to educate well-rounded, healthy individuals. Unfortunately, as research shows, this
is not exactly happening. There are three major components within the school system that
directly effect an early adolescents’ development. First, schools are not providing children with
the proper amount of physical activity through physical education or recess. Second, there is not
enough emphasis placed on sleep by the schools, which is demonstrated through the start and end
times along with the increased homework loads keeping children up later at night. And third,
because of the use of technology, children are increasingly eating more unhealthy foods
containing far too many calories and the improper nutrition. There is an increasing pressure to
improve test scores, which puts the emphasis on physical educations to a minimum, which in
turn causes an increase in health issues and a decrease in academic achievement (Grissom,
2005). It is important for schools to realize that in order to optimize cognitive development, a
child must be physically healthy.

3. SCHOOLS CONTRIBUTION TO THE UNHEALTHY ADOLESCENT 3
Introduction
As society progressively becomes more and more holistically unhealthy, there is a
continuation of negative connotation towards early-aged adolescents in regards to their overall
health. If we perform an extensive assessment on how schools contribute to this issue, we can
better understand the stereotype that has been placed on a large portion of the adolescent
population. According to personal calculations based off of the Oconee County School System’s
website, early adolescent children spend approximately 6.75 hours of the total 24 hours in a day
at school from 7:45 am to 2:30 pm. In addition to these hours spent at school, adolescents have a
recommended 60 minutes of physical activity to achieve daily. A major health concern today in
American society is that most of our children are not even remotely close to achieving this
recommendation (Huberty, Beets, Beighle, Saint- Maurice, and Welk, 2014). Contributing
factors include the participation in sedentary behaviors and activities rather than physical and
active behaviors, the lack of physical activity in schools, poor sleeping habits, and poor non-
nutritious diet consumption.
Lack of Physical Activity in Schools
Most schools in the United States have two opportunities to encourage physical activity
during the school day: recess and physical education (PE) class. Huberty, Beets, Beighle, Saint-
Maurice, and Welk conducted a study titled ‘Ready for Recess’ from 2009- 2011. 12 schools
from a Midwestern Metropolitan area in the United States were used as subjects in the study. The
researchers sought out statistics and reasons pertaining to the sedentary behaviors of adolescent
children in schools. Ready for Recess provided staff training on ways to promote and establish
physical activity habits in the children and recreational equipment for the use of the children
during recess and PE. The attempt amongst this small population to decrease the percentage of

4. SCHOOLS CONTRIBUTION TO THE UNHEALTHY ADOLESCENT 4
sedentary behaviors and encourage physical activity was overall unsuccessful. The only increase
in physical activity was seen in boys.
This particular study serves as an example to illustrate the seriousness of the difficulty in
reversing the statistics of poor physical activity in schools. Resources were provided to these
schools for both the teachers and children to encourage an increase in physical activity during the
school day. Even with the resources readily available, adults are continuing to fail at establishing
the habits of physical activity in children, allowing them to remain within their sedentary
lifestyle. Schools have access to the statistics regarding to the declining health of children and
how sedentary children are becoming, yet, for example, schools such as those in Oregon are
failing to provide the proper amount of physical education and recess. According to research
done by Oregon State University, 92% of Oregon elementary schools did not meet the proper
amount of physical activity time (National Association for Physical Education and American
Heart Association, 2012).
In order to help society as a whole to better understand this correlation, research was
done to show that cardiovascular fitness and cognitive performance are positively associated
(Aberg, et al., 2009) Despite these findings, there is still a lack of emphasis on physical activity
within schools. Along with the lack of physical activity at school, a major component of these
young adolescent’s sedentary lifestyle and inattention during school is their sleep habits. As one
may assume, physical activity promotes a healthier sleep schedule and reversely, sleep promotes
better physical performance (Dimitroui et al, 2015).
Sleep in Young Adolescents
Sue Adams, Jennifer Daly, and Desiree Williford report that adolescents need 8.5- 10
hours of sleep per night; however, the average American adolescent only gets approximately 7.5-

5. SCHOOLS CONTRIBUTION TO THE UNHEALTHY ADOLESCENT 5
8.5 hours of sleep each night. On a school night, many will only sleep 6.5 hours (2013, p.99).
There are several conflicting factors that influence the amount of sleep that adolescents get on an
average night. As modern society is increasingly placing more and more demands on adolescents
in school with earlier start times and more homework, along with employment and extra-
curricular activities, adolescents are not forming consistent sleep patterns. They are napping
during odd hours of the afternoon, leading them to stay up even later at night. During those late
hours awake at night, adolescents are being kept awake by the use of technology. In 2012, the
Pew Research Center found that 78% of adolescents aging from 12-17 have a cell phone. The
majority uses their cell phone within the hour before trying to fall asleep. In general, people are
unaware that the backlight within most cell phones disrupts the circadian rhythm and expression
of melatonin, leading to sleep and neurobehavioral abnormalities. This results in few hours of
sleep, causing the adolescent to be more tired and fatigued throughout the day, enhancing their
inability to focus and perform better at school. Sleep is a major source of recovery for
adolescents and many studies have shown an association between sleep duration and lower
academic achievement (Owens et al., 2014). Simultaneously there is an increase in the desire to
remain within that sedentary lifestyle because of lack of sleep. Another key aspect to an
adolescent’s health, which schools are affecting, is their diet.
Diet
A very common statement to make is that “you are what you eat”. If schools are
promoting that their young adolescents consume poor quality foods and foods with low
nutritional value, it is going to become increasingly hard for them to hold their students to
standards of high performance. Schools may or may not be aware that they are promoting these
habits.

6. SCHOOLS CONTRIBUTION TO THE UNHEALTHY ADOLESCENT 6
Technology is used more and more in schools today. A popular form of technology used
in school instruction is videos. A study was done for the American Journal of Preventative
Medicine, in regards to the sedentary behavior of children and their diet, which showed a
positive correlation. Pearson and Biddle found that watching videos, or viewing TV, “was
consistently inversely associated with fruit and vegetable consumption and positively associated
with consumption of energy-dense snacks and drinks, total energy intake, and fast foods”. The
energy intake is in reference to the caloric intake. Technology is used so frequently that schools
are incorporating it into their teaching styles without any hesitation. If young adolescents are
continually exposed to videos, and the content within them as well as the advertising content and
product placement incorporated in the video, they will consequently increase their caloric intake
through their consumption of unhealthy foods. The use of videos to engage young adolescents
during school is actually contributing to the increasing childhood obesity rate, which directly
correlates to poor attention span in schools and a decrease in physical activity.
Conclusion
The youth of America is in the hand of educators. With young adolescents spending a
large portion of their awake hours at school, it is guaranteed that their school will have a large
impact on their health and well-being. Schools are increasingly placing greater demands on
students at younger ages to perform to a high standard without taking into account how it may be
affecting the children. By assessing schools physical education and recess time, the sleep
patterns, and the effect schools have on the diet of young adolescents it is clear as to why there is
a negative stereotype placed on America’s youth as a whole. Research proves that schools across
America should provide more physical education and recess time, provide the opportunity for

7. SCHOOLS CONTRIBUTION TO THE UNHEALTHY ADOLESCENT 7
more sleep to adolescents, and limit the amount of video use within instruction in order to
combat the increasing childhood obesity rate and help develop healthier adolescents.
Without even looking at the positive health benefits of an increased physical activity
level, we can be sure that there are academic benefits (Grissom, 2005). If educators and the
school systems in America want our youth to reach their full potential, they need to realize that
by contributing to the adolescents sedentary lifestyle they are condoning poor educational
performance (National Association for Physical Education and American Heart Association,
2012).

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References
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health is associated with cognition in young adulthood. Proceedings of the National
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Adams, S.K., Daly, J.F., Williford, D.N. (2013). Adolescent sleep and cellular phone use: Recent
trends and implications for research. Health Services Insight, 6, 99-103. doi:
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Dimitriou, D., Le Cornu Knight, F., Milton, P. (2015). The role of environmental factors on sleep
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Grissom, J. (2005). Physical fitness and academic achievement. Journal of Exercise Physiology,
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Owens, J., Drobnich, D., Baylor, A., Lewin. (2014). School start time change: An in-depth
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9. SCHOOLS CONTRIBUTION TO THE UNHEALTHY ADOLESCENT 9
Pearson, N., Biddle, S.J.H. (2011). Sedentary behavior and dietary intake in children,
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