Video games blamed for China's college kids getting more out of shape

According to China’s Ministry of Education, the nation’s students are getting healthier. This is great news, as health rates among students had been dropping for several decades, but there’s one group of students that has apparently avoided the turnaround and continued to get worse: college kids.

According to a report in Sina Games, online game addiction as an escape from the pressures of college life is likely one of the main reasons for the drop in Chinese college kids’ physical health. Stress plays a role, of course, but so too does sitting in a chair for hours on end.

(See: 5 ways to keep in shape while gaming)

In response, some schools have already started requiring endurance training, and the Ministry of Education has released regulations that would require students to pass minimum physical health standards to graduate university.

But some college students say that a big part of the problem is that they simply don’t have time to exercise as much as they should, given the workload and pressures of their studies. And Fan Qinghui, the physical education director for a Beijing university coalition, points out that the problem may have more to do with the national education system. “For example,” he says, “first-year college students’ physical education marks are often not as good as second-year students because they’ve just spent all of their final year of high school studying [for the college entrance exam] without worrying much about their physical health.”

Of course, playing video games isn’t necessarily bad for your health anyway. It can be great for your brain (see below) and there are lots of ways you can make it good for your body, too.

(via Sina Games)

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