A friend of mine works as a Respiratory Care Practitioner at the Pulmonary Function Lab at Yale-New Haven Hospital. I recently told him about the Families and Technology blog, and a few days later he related this story to me:

At my lab, we ran a test on a 13-year-old boy who was becoming quite short of breath while playing soccer. His parents also noted that it took quite some time before he seemed to catch his breath. They did the whole cardiac work up and then we exercised him in our lab. Well, his heart rate went up, as we expected, but took quite some time to come back down to baseline. This young lad didn’t have an ounce of fat of him. (I wish I could claim the same)…

It was determined that he was completely out of shape. And if you think about it… We have a generation of video game and computer users, and handheld games involved in these kids’ lives. The result is that these kids have well-developed fingers and typing skills, but are (for the lack of a better word) Computer Chair Potatoes… Children today have to get away from the video screen and do some fun outdoor activity.

According to the mom, this kid, who’s on the soccer team and not fat, plays a lot of video games. Despite appearing to be in shape, he was significantly out of shape for what a 13-year-old should be.

Just because your kids don’t appear to be fat or unhealthy, don’t ignore the affects that hours in front of screens will have them. When previous generations were kids — before cable, computers, and video games — we spent more time outside and on our feet, moving around and doing things.