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Goldilocks Days: optimising children's time use for health and well-being

Dorothea Dumuid1, Timothy Olds2,3, Katherine Lange3,4

  • 1Alliance for Research in Exercise, Nutrition and Activity (ARENA), Allied Health & Human Performance, University of South Australia, Adelaide, South Australia, Australia dot.dumuid@unisa.edu.au.

Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health
|August 13, 2021
PubMed

Insights

Finding the ideal daily schedule for 11-12 year olds requires balancing sleep, sedentary time, and physical activity. The "Goldilocks Day" optimizes diverse health and cognitive outcomes, but individual priorities necessitate personalized recommendations.

Area of Science:

  • Pediatric Health
  • Time-Use Research
  • Population Health Management

Background:

  • Individual health outcomes often conflict, making universal time-allocation strategies ineffective for children.
  • Optimal 24-hour time use varies significantly across physical, cognitive, and well-being domains in preadolescent children.
  • Personalized recommendations are needed to balance competing health objectives in population health.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To determine optimal 24-hour time allocations for diverse physical, cognitive/academic, and well-being outcomes in 11-12 year olds.
  • To identify a balanced 'Goldilocks Day' schedule that optimizes multiple child health indicators.
  • To develop a customizable tool for individualizing time-use recommendations based on specific priorities.

Main Methods:

  • Utilized data from the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children (n=1874, 11-12 years).
  • Employed 7-day accelerometry for objective 24-hour time-use measurement.
  • Applied compositional regression to model relationships between time use and a comprehensive set of health and cognitive outcomes.

Main Results:

  • Optimal durations for sleep, sedentary time, light physical activity, and moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) varied significantly by outcome (p≤0.04).
  • Physical health benefits were maximized with high MVPA and low sedentary time; mental health with high sleep and low sedentary time; cognitive health with high sedentary time and low physical activity.
  • The 'Goldilocks Day' comprised 10h 21min sleep, 9h 44min sedentary time, 2h 26min light physical activity, and 1h 29min MVPA.

Conclusions:

  • Achieving an optimal 'Goldilocks Day' requires acknowledging and compromising on competing health, social, and economic priorities.
  • Personalized time-use strategies are essential for optimizing child well-being across diverse outcomes.
  • An interactive tool facilitates the customization of time-use recommendations to individual needs and priorities.
Abstract

Keywords:
cognitionexercisemental healthobesitysleep

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