Researchers found that students that have good grades are more likely to be more physically active compared to students with lower grades in addition to having a healthier diet.
By Francisco Serrano and Cody Medina
Students that had a higher physical activity rate were able to improve on their grades because it made their coordination and motor skills/concentration better. While students that had no trace of physical activity instead focused on using technology which is part of the reason for them not receiving good grades.
According to the Erickson institute of technology, young children found that 85% of parents reported allowing their children from a young age to use technology, in addition 72% of those parents are concerned with the amount of screen time their children get.
“Children today are born into a world where technology is deeply integrated into the fabric of daily life” said Erikson-Institute Technology-and-Young-student-survey, a source from the internet. Parents today are concerned that technology has a strong hold on today’s youth, making them unable to focus on the things around them, making them miss out on important subjects in their life.
According to the CDC approximately only 15% of students with A’s watch television for 3 hours or more compared to the 28% of students with F’s. A simple way to illustrate this is for every student with an A who watches television, two students with F’s watch television.
According to Erikson-Institute Technology-and-Young-student-survey a majority of parents’ concerns for their children’s use of technology listed on the graph was that 72% feel that their children were spending too much screen time.
The CDC concluded that there was a very notable correlation between physical activity and grades, but they also concluded that there was not enough evidence to definitively conclude that grades are affected by physical activity and vice versa.
Physical activity is important because it decreases the chances of becoming obese mainly in teens. The prevalence of obesity in children from the age of 6-11 is 20.3%, and 21.2% for teens of the age 12-19.
In 2019, 42% of students that had mostly A’s ate breakfast compared to the 20% of students who didn’t get low grades. This is important because when looking at it from a wide lens, half of all students with A’s eat breakfast compared to the one-fifth of students with F’s.
The CDC further went and did a survey to find if there was any correlation between the grades of students who drink milk to those who don’t. They found that there was no large correlation between students who do and who don’t, showing that milk taken daily has little to no correlation to grades.
Two million Americans live 20 miles or more away from a supermarket, furthermore, for every supermarket there are about 5 fast food chains. This is important because a good diet can improve students cognitive skills but an unhealthy diet makes it so students get less of the necessary nutrients your body needs to function.
Eating a good diet and being physically active have a good effect on having a happier life because the food we eat, vegetables and fruits have in them Amino acids and Vitamin B which triggers the serotonin which are our body’s “feel good” neurotransmitters. In addition, having a good diet improves the quantity and quality of one’s sleep schedule which inherently helps students focus more on their studies.
For further information we recommend checking the CDCs Health and Academics website page.