Text messages could help keep kids healthy

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Technology is often blamed for keeping children sedentary, but a new study suggests that cell-phone text messages could be used to encourage kids to watch their diets and get off the couch.

In the pilot study, researchers looked at whether text messaging could offer a kid-friendly way to encourage exercise, less TV time and healthier eating. The point was get children to "self-monitor" their own behavior -- something considered key to healthy lifestyle changes in both adults and kids.

"Self-monitoring of calorie intake and expenditure and of body weight is extremely important for the long-term success of weight loss and weight control," Dr. Jennifer R. Shapiro, the lead researcher on the study, said in a written statement.

"Unfortunately, both children and adults who are trying to lose weight often do not adhere to self-monitoring," added Shapiro, an assistant professor of psychiatry at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

The most common method of self-monitoring is to keep an old-fashioned paper diary -- something many children and teenagers may resist. So Shapiro and her colleagues equipped 18 children between the ages of 5 and 13 with a cell phone that they and their parents used to communicate with the researchers.

Every day for eight weeks, the families were sent text messages asking how much time the child had spent exercising that day, how much time was spent in front of a TV or computer, and whether the child had had any sugary drinks that day. They immediately got text messages in response -- either congratulating them on healthy behavior or encouraging them to make healthier choices next time.

Two other groups of children were followed for comparison. In one group, 18 children and their parents were asked to keep paper diaries on the same lifestyle habits; in the other, families went about life as normal.

Overall, Shapiro's team found, families in the text-messaging group were more likely to complete the study, and text-messagers were more likely than diary-keepers to keep track of their daily behavior.

What's more, children in the text-message group were the only ones who showed a general decline in TV and computer time, the researchers report in the Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior.

The findings, they say, suggest that kids and parents are at least open to using text messaging in this way. Whether the tactic ultimately leads to healthier kids requires more study.

"Cell phone text messaging is something that's very familiar to most children now, since they've grown up with it," Shapiro said. "By using this technology, we were hoping to make self-monitoring seem more like fun to them and less like work."

SOURCE: Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior, November/December 2008.

http://www.reutershealth.com/archive/2008/11/18/eline/links/20081118elin003.html