240 Million Teens Got Zero Exercise Last Week — and Nothing Has Changed in 15 Years

One in four adolescents on the planet reported not getting even a single day of meaningful physical activity in the past week — and that number has barely moved in 15 years. According to a new WHO report published Wednesday in The Lancet Global Health, about 240 million young people between the ages of 11 and 17 did not log a single day with at least 60 minutes of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity in the prior week. The global average was just 2.7 active days per week. Only 14 percent — one in seven — were active every day.

Drawing on 389 population-based surveys from 140 countries and territories and covering more than 3.2 million adolescents — 59 percent of the global adolescent population, according to Euronews — the report is titled A Generation Missing Out: Global Trends in Adolescent Physical Activity, 2010–2025. Its central finding is not just that inactivity is widespread, but that it is entrenched: the share of adolescents failing to meet the daily activity threshold has remained virtually unchanged since 2010.

For 15 years, the world has made almost no progress in getting young people moving, and girls are being left furthest behind.— Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General

The gender gap is one of the report's starkest findings. Twenty-eight percent of girls reported no active days in the previous week, compared with 22 percent of boys. At the other end of the scale, only 11 percent of girls reported being active every day, against 17 percent of boys. Girls averaged 2.4 active days per week; boys averaged three. In nearly every country and WHO region, boys outpaced girls in activity levels, and the disparity grows more pronounced as girls age, according to Euronews.

Geography matters enormously. Young people in higher-income regions — Central and Eastern Europe, Central Asia, East Asia and the Pacific, and high-income Western nations — put up an average of four active days per week, and between 6.9 and 7.7 percent reported no activity at all. Across predominantly lower- and middle-income regions — among them Latin America and the Caribbean, the Middle East and North Africa, Oceania, South and Southeast Asia, and Sub-Saharan Africa — the weekly average fell to roughly two active days, with 22.7 to 33.1 percent of adolescents completely inactive. Finland, Canada and Serbia produced the most active adolescents, at 4.5 to 4.8 active days per week on average, while Cambodia, Jordan and Madagascar had the least active, at 1.7 to 1.9, according to Euronews. The spread between countries was wide: some recorded just 4 percent of adolescents with no active days, while others topped 40 percent.

Insufficient physical activity raises the risk of heart disease, type 2 diabetes and certain cancers. The WHO's global target calls for a 15 percent relative reduction in adolescent inactivity between 2010 and 2030 — but the report finds no country or region is on track to meet it. The report cautions that, absent a significant step-up in effort, levels of adolescent inactivity are unlikely to look much different by the end of the decade.

The report is careful not to frame this as a failure of individual willpower. The authors point to structural drivers: transport patterns, access to safe public spaces, school environments, affordability, social norms and increasingly screen-based lifestyles. The geographic and income-based disparities, Euronews notes, are driven mainly by wealthier countries' greater capacity to fund physical activity policies and build supportive infrastructure such as open spaces and safe cycling networks. Among girls in particular, factors such as limiting gender norms, concerns about personal safety, and a shortage of suitable activities stand in the way.

The answer is not to tell adolescents to try harder. It is to build schools, streets and communities where moving, playing and being active is safe, easy and normal.— Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General

The WHO is urging governments to bring together education, transport, urban planning, sport and health sectors in a coordinated response. Among the actions recommended are expanding physical activity in schools, funding safe routes for walking and cycling, and developing policies that embed activity into everyday life — with a particular focus on girls and those adolescents who are currently least active.

Why it matters — Physical inactivity in adolescence raises lifetime risk of heart disease, type 2 diabetes and some cancers — and 15 years of global data show the problem is not improving on its own.

Reported by who.int, globalissues.org, euronews.com, foreignaffairsnews.com