February 18, 2025
SEOUL – South Korean middle and high schoolers spend an average of more than 11 hours a day sitting, a study showed Monday, raising alarms about their severe lack of physical activity.
A report published by the Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs revealed that Korean adolescents aged 13 to 19 remained seated for an average of 11.02 hours a day on weekdays and 9.21 hours a day on weekends in 2023.
In 2017, the figures were 10.19 hours on weekdays and 8.45 hours on weekends, indicating an upward trend in the amount of time Korean teenagers spent sitting each day.
The report analyzed the results of an annual survey conducted by the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency on more than 50,000 middle and high school students from 800 schools across the nation’s 17 metropolitan cities and provinces between 2017 and 2023.
While the amount of time spent sitting for academic purposes slightly declined over the period, non-academic sitting time increased, according to the report.
The average time spent sitting for study-related activities in 2023 was 7.59 hours on weekdays and 3.84 hours on weekends, a decrease from the 2017 figures of 7.64 hours and 3.92 hours, respectively.
But the time spent seated for personal leisure averaged 3.44 hours on weekdays and 5.37 hours on weekends in 2023, marking an increase from 2.55 hours and 4.53 hours in 2017, respectively.
“It is clear that leisure time among Korean adolescents is becoming increasingly sedentary,” the KIHS said in a statement.
The World Health Organization recommends adolescents engage in at least one hour of moderate-to-vigorous exercise daily, yet physical activity among Korean students remains severely lacking.
Only 17.1 percent of the surveyed teenagers participated in at least 60 minutes of vigorous exercise on five or more days a week, according to the report.