Effectiveness Of Wearable Activity Trackers To Increase Physical Activity In Children During An Afterschool Program

After-school programs are promising vehicles for providing meaningful health-related activities to many children as over 10 million children in the United States participate in such programs annually, and more time can be devoted to physical activity in these types of programs than otherwise might be available during a typical school day. Wearable activity trackers offer an appealing, low-cost tool that might further incentivize children to be physically active. PURPOSE: This study determined whether wearing an activity tracker further increased moderate to vigorous activity (MVPA) and step count in children participating in an afterschool physical activity program. METHODS: A randomized crossover design was used to assess 34 students (age 8-11) participating in a 7-week after-school physical activity program. Participants were randomly assigned to one of two groups where one group wore both an accelerometer (ActiGraph wGT3X-BT, Pensacola, FL) on their waist and an activity tracker on their wrist during weeks 2, 4, and 6 of the program, while the other group wore the accelerometer and activity tracker on weeks 3, 5, and 7 of the program. During the weeks when participants were not wearing the activity tracker, they wore the accelerometer only. Paired-samples T-tests were used to compare differences in average MVPA and average step count between those weeks the participant wore the activity tracker and those weeks when they did not wear the activity tracker. RESULTS: When participants wore the activity trackers, MVPA (11.08 ± 3.3 min vs 10.03 ± 3.6 min) and step count (1367 ± 379 vs. 1186 ± 412) were 10% and 15% higher, respectively, compared to when the activity trackers were not worn, (both p < 0.001). CONCLUSIONS: Physical activity programs designed for children can be even more effective at providing MVPA and steps when coupled with wearable activity trackers.