RIGA 's New research from the World Health Organization and Latvia's Public Health Agency provides further evidence that Latvia is catching up with Western Europe and the U.S. 's but not in a good way.
Latvia's school-age children are turning into a bunch of lazy couch potatoes, just like their western counterparts. Schoolchildren spend 5 hours a day in front of the TV and 3 hours in front of a computer screen. The data was assembled from 2002-6.
Levels of physical activity decline with age. For example, the number of girls, who are sufficiently physically active at the age of 11 is 45.5 percent, while at the age of 15, the figure is 35.8 percent.
A total of 4,245 schoolchildren from the fifth, seventh, and ninth grades took part in the research.
One in five of those asked admitted spending up to five hours on computer games on weekdays with even more doing the same at weekends.
