Ryan Ireland is a physiotherapist at the Hospital for Sick Kids. Ryan was involved in coaching children’s sports teams before he attended the University of Toronto for the Masters in Physical Therapy program. He currently isn’t as involved in children’s sports. He has more to do with children now that are very ill and experience little activity. However, he does follow the trends of society and has noticed some contributing factors to the lack of physical activity that children get.
Technological advancements. Although they have been necessary for our society to be where we are today, it is also a “necessary evil,” as Ryan would put it. 20 years ago, cell phones were much less prominent than they are in today’s society. Computers were the same situation. Not very many families could afford to buy a computer and cell phones were still very foreign. 15 years ago, children didn’t have near as much access to play on their parents phones are our children do in today’s age. When my 3 older siblings were around eight years old, my parents were just getting cell phones and that was in about 1995. Technology is now the base for sedentary activity in children.
When students of F.E. Madill have been asked about the use of iPads and smart boards in classrooms they respond with a negative attitude towards them. Ryan’s response was more open ended. “Writing notes by hand or watching a teacher draw on the chalkboard are just as sedentary as using an iPad, so I don’t feel strongly about them in today’s society.” He also mentioned that the use of iPads could be helpful in the sense that they would “allow kids to be mobile while they learn,” meaning the kids could use their iPads outside of the classroom in an outdoor environment “in a more active sense during school lessons.”
Another contributing factor is the “resource crisis” in the Greater Toronto Area. Ryan says that the “number of available park spaces, arenas, soccer fields, etc.” are becoming hard to come by. This in turn leads to having to accommodate for travel time and expenses to get to and from sporting events. The cause is that families may not have the resources and thus don’t participate in these sports.
In the participaction report, it stated that children spend 8.5 hours being sedentary, doing things that don’t require any physical activity. Schooling is a major contributor to the 8.5 hours of sedentary activities in a child’s life. However, Ryan states, “The reality is, school is a necessary component of children’s lives,” and thus what is there to do about the lack of physical activity. Ryan suggests that schools take the lead in increasing physical education throughout the daily schedule of a child “in order to drive a necessary change in our society.” The only problem with this suggestion is that there have been concerns on whether physical activity should be banned from schools.