Response to the article: Insufficient physical activity levels and high screen time among adolescents: the impact of associated factors.

Abstract

The present study shows the insufficient level of adolescent’s physical activity and long exposure to technology screens, revealing that most young people were classified as insufficiently active (83.2%) and with long exposure to screen activity (84.8%). It also reveals that when combined presence of insufficient level of physical activity and long screen activity was found, the values were high (72.1%). However, it is important to note that the sample was composed of adolescents enrolled in high school (aged ≥15 years to <18 years) from public schools in São José dos Pinhais, Paraná. This fact leads us to believe that a sample collected only of students from public schools with no students from the private schools may underestimate the results, because according to the cohort study, cited in the article, conducted with adolescents from 10 to 12 years old from Pelotas, Rio Grande do Sul (multivariate analysis), concluded that the sedentary lifestyle was positively associated with females, with socioeconomic level, maternal inactivity, watching television and that the lowest socioeconomic level spends more time on physical activity, since students usually walk to school. Somehow, we can understand that private school students have a higher socioeconomic level and that this factor can contribute even more to less physical activity and more time of exposure to screen. Although the authors were concerned to inform that the results should be interpreted with caution, limiting the extrapolation of data that tend to underestimate or overestimate the responses and have limitations as to their accuracy, it is important to suggest that a sample composed not only of students from public schools, but also from private schools, it would not open space for questions regarding the results obtained. However, probably the results would be more reliable, since the title of the article uses the word “adolescents” in a generalized way. Therefore, it would be interesting to describe in the title, that these students are teenagers from public schools and not just teenagers. Finally, we suggest the production of a work that involves students from public and private schools in order to present results that represent a more reliable sample and that really represents the behavior of adolescents from different socioeconomic classes.