Teens who take more steps a day have fewer mental health problems a year later
A study of 5,515 US young people who wore activity trackers found that the more steps they took, the fewer symptoms of anxiety, low mood or behaviour problems they had the following year. It is an association, not proof of cause and effect.
Moving a little more each day may go hand in hand with better mental health in the teenage years. A study published on 1 October in JAMA Network Open by researchers at King’s College London and the University of Massachusetts Amherst followed 5,515 young people in the US. Those who took more steps a day had fewer mental health problems a year later.
The data comes from the ABCD Study, the largest long-term study of child brain development in the US, run across 21 sites. The children, aged 11 and 12, wore an activity tracker for three weeks. A year later, they and their parents filled in a questionnaire on anxiety, low mood and behaviour problems.
What they found
Those taking fewer than 5,000 steps a day had the most symptoms; those averaging around 8,000 had fewer, and those reaching 12,000 or more had the fewest. The researchers saw no ceiling: every extra 1,000 to 2,000 steps was linked to better results, whatever the starting point.
The most active teens also had slightly thicker tissue in two brain regions involved in movement and emotional control, which may partly explain the link. Step count was not linked to school results.
‘Adolescents don’t need to be elite athletes to benefit,’ says Amanda Paluch of UMass Amherst, who encourages simple, enjoyable ways to get moving, such as walking to school.
The limits
This is an observational study: it shows an association, not that walking more causes better mental health. The link held after accounting for each teen’s earlier problems, but the authors acknowledge that those who felt better may simply have been more active to begin with. Steps were measured for only three weeks, the brain differences are small and few teens reached very high step counts. Lead author Qingyang Li calls the findings preliminary. Still, they point the same way as plenty of other research: exercise is good for the mind.
