Associations Between Gaming and Physical Activity Among Finnish Adolescents During and After the Spring 2020 COVID-19 Lockdown

Abstract

<p>Aims: To investigate the changes in gaming, such as Esports play between spring (COVID-19 lockdown) and autumn 2020 among Finnish high school students. Moreover, to examine the associations between gaming and physical activity (PA) behaviours.</p><p>Methods and Results: Data from online self-report survey; Finnish late-adolescent physical activity (LAPA) study during spring (n = 2459) and autumn (n = 4781) 2020 were used to address the aims of the study. Descriptive statistics to compare the change between spring and autumn 2020 were used. Multinominal logistic regression analyses were stratified by data collection with PA as the outcome, after controlling for age, disability, place of residence. There were increases between spring and autumn 2020 in gaming behaviours among all genres covered in the LAPA study. Esports play during the autumn was negatively associated with daily PA (OR = 0.65, CI = 0.44 – 0.95), but not during the spring. On the other hand, playing sport video games were positively associated with PA at least 5 days a week in both spring (OR = 1.86, CI = 1.26 – 2.74) and autumn (OR = 2.14, CI = 1.65 – 2.77) time periods.</p><p>Conclusions: There were increases in gaming behaviour between spring (COVID-19 lockdown) and autumn 2020 among Finnish high school students, especially among Esport players. There were negative associations with esport playing and daily PA. Since daily PA is the Finnish national recommendation, esport players could be a target group to promote PA behaviours.<br></p>