Behavioral and Social Approaches to Increase Physical Activity: Classroom-Based Health Education to Reduce TV Viewing and Video Game Playing

Task Force Finding*

In these interventions, health education classes taught in elementary school classrooms as part of a general health curriculum by regular classroom teachers specifically emphasize decreasing the amount of time spent watching television and playing video games. Lessons include behavioral management strategies such as self-monitoring of viewing behavior, limiting access to television and video games, and budgeting time for television and video. All studies reviewed included a “TV turnoff challenge” in which students were encouraged not to watch television for a specified number of days. Alternative activities that required greater energy expenditure were not specifically recommended. Parental involvement was a prominent part of the intervention, and all households were given automatic television use monitors.

The Task Force identified three qualifying studies that evaluated the effectiveness of these interventions. Although the studies showed decreases in the amount of time spent in television viewing and other sedentary behaviors and found reductions in adiposity, they did not provide consistent evidence for increased physical activity. On the basis of the small number of available studies, the variability in the interventions evaluated, and the lack of information specifically linking these programs to increases in PA, insufficient evidence exists to assess the effectiveness of classroom-based health education focused on reducing television viewing and video game playing in increasing physical activity.

*From the following publication:

Task Force on Community Preventive Services. Recommendations to increase physical activity in communities. [PDF - 70KB] Am J Prev Med 2002;22 (4S):67-72.

Review completed: October 2000