Modern life has made British children weaker in the last decade

Modern Britain is raising a generation of weaklings as computer games and health and safety rules are curtailing rough and tumble outdoor play, a new study finds. 

 By Richard Alleyne

A shift away from traditional activities like climbing trees, ropes and wall bars has made modern 10-year-olds physically weaker than their counterparts a decade ago.

They can do fewer sit ups, are less able to hang from wall bars and are generally less muscular than those brought up in the 1990s.

The findings, published in the child health journal Acta Paediatrica, have led to fresh concern about the impact on children's health caused by the shift away from outdoor activities.

"This is probably due to changes in activity patterns among English 10-year-olds, such as taking part in fewer activities like rope-climbing in PE and tree-climbing for fun," said Dr Gavin Sandercock, the lead author at Essex University.

"Typically, these activities boosted children's strength, making them able to lift and hold their own body weight."

Dr Sandercock, a fitness expert, and his team studied how strong a group of 315 Essex 10-year-olds in 2008 were compared with 309 children the same age in 1998.

They found that even though children had the same height to weight ratio, they were becoming weaker, less muscular and unable to do physical tasks that previous generations found simple, research has revealed.

In particular, the number of sit-ups 10-year-olds can do declined by 27.1 per cent between 1998 and 2008, arm strength fell by 26 per cent and grip strength by seven per cent and twice as many children (one in 10) could not hold their own weight when hanging from wall bars.

Dr Sandercock said some of the findings were "really shocking".

Previous research has already shown that children are becoming more unfit, less active and more sedentary and, in many cases, heavier than before.

But the new study also found that children in 2008 had the same body mass index (BMI) as those a decade earlier.

The authors want ministers to reduce their reliance on the National Child Measurement Programme, which surveys primary schoolchildren's BMI, and introduce fitness testing in all schools – a call made last year by the then-chief medical officer, Sir Liam Donaldson.

"Climbing trees and ropes used to be standard practice for children, but school authorities and 'health and safety' have contrived to knock the sap out of our children," said Tam Fry of the Child Growth Foundation.

"Falling off a branch used to be a good lesson in picking yourself up and learning to climb better. Now fear of litigation stops the child climbing in the first place."