You'd think lockdown would be heaven for us layabouts – but half the UK has actually started 'exercising more'
- Reference: 1593073810
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/06/25/ucl_lockdown_activity_study/
- Source link:
According to the study, more than half of the UK population are now exercising or meditating at least once a day, with running, cycling, and strolling "on the rise."
After getting nearly 4,000 responses, the UCL Centre for Digital Public Health & Emergencies is using the early findings to develop a new app – [1]My Lockdown Journal – which is designed to help people manage their time by logging their own activities and "sharing inspiring ideas along with motivational quotes and tips for improving well-being."
It's a timely move because UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson has announced a [2]partial easing of the lockdown with the restricted opening of pubs, restaurants and hairdressers – although good luck if you want to get the kids back in school.
UCL found that under lockdown 52 per cent of the population exercised once a day, while 59 per cent have made more time for relaxation and personal interests.
"Yoga, meditation and reading have seen the biggest increase in relaxation activities and walking, cycling and running are on the rise, with people doing more of previous sporting activities rather than finding new ones," the study stated.
But the reaction to lockdown varies with age. Older generations are coping much better with isolation.
For 18 to 24-year-olds, 36 per cent reported being irritable "quite a lot" and 8 per cent "all the time"; 30 per cent said they were distressed "quite a lot" and 31 per cent said they were upset "quite a lot". The over-65s were much more chilled. Only 10 per cent said they were distressed "quite a lot", with very few saying "all the time" for any of the listed negative feelings, which goes to show what paying off your mortgage and getting a gold-plated pension can do for you, right Baby Boomers?
The study was led by UCL's Professor Patty Kostkova, who said the team's app would "leverage our expertise in digital health to provide a practical public health intervention that helps people cope better during the lockdown and upcoming period of social distancing, directly support policy makers and public health professionals."
She encouraged people to use the app and hashtags #MyLockdownJournal and #LockdownJournal, which enters them into a competition to "celebrate the most creative and motivating lockdown activities each week".
Georgiana Birjovanu, a software engineer who worked on the app, said: "It's an extremely unusual time and will provide insight into how people choose to engage with digital tools and social media during times of isolation and uncertainty."
Dutch public health tech company Transmissible BV also contributed to the app.
Far from bringing people together, the study shows how different groups vary in their response to the lockdown restrictions. Social class may also play a factor, if a [3]recent article in the Financial Times is anything to go by.
The piece, titled "The awkward lessons of my luxury lockdown in Kensington", noted that being a "freelance journalist blessed with an inheritance as well as a venture-capitalist husband" made life a little easier, as did spending £65-£95 an hour for online tutoring for the kids.
The only struggle was choosing the right outfit for Zoom calls. The writer, Shruti Advani, finally opted for "Olivia von Halle for silk pajamas in colours guaranteed to make the dullest meeting come alive".
The rest of us can, thanks to UCL, look forward to documenting our lockdown experiences, whether in misery or in meditation, via an app. ®
Sponsored: [4]Security Features of Connect for Anthos
[1] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.dphejournal
[2] https://www.gov.uk/government/news/pm-announces-easing-of-lockdown-restrictions-23-june-2020
[3] https://www.ft.com/content/8ea1c992-89f8-11ea-a109-483c62d17528
[4] https://go.theregister.com/tl/1956/-8474/security-features-of-connect-for-anthos?td=wptl1956
Re: Say or do?
UCL is certainly no longer the same institution as when I did my degree there in the late 80s. Junk science and denaming (SIC) of buildings pervades.
Self-selecting survey
While the respondents claim they are doing yoga and meditation, the actual figures show the nation is turning to bottled firms of relaxation...
Re: Self-selecting survey
Some anyway. Locking down in the Scottish Borders and unwilling to drive (as we normally cycle the 5 miles either way) to get any enormous load, has severely reduced our alcohol intake. At the same time, not having to worry about commuting to Edinburgh a few times a week has made cycling much easier - which combine with the weather has got us up to 40 miles per day for the fun of it*
*Yes another bit of anecdotal data (certainly not evidence of something that can be extrapolated), but in the same vein, I see rather more cyclists coming past every day, some of whom tend to be weekend only riders as their commutes get in the way.
Re: Self-selecting survey
I would be in a perpetual loop of cycling to the offy only to need to stop and have a sharpener ... and then have to to go back for more.
icon, well .. because ..
Re: Self-selecting survey
Locking down in the Scottish Borders .... has severely reduced our alcohol intake
Does not compute. Have you failed to have sufficient cases of Scotch put by in case of zombies? What were you bloody thinking?!
I could go for probably about 10 years before running out of whiskey, maybe 20, but after that there's various shades of vodka knocking about and some miscellaneous bottles of cocktail ingredient stuff.
You can't drink toilet roll chap!
Not wasting time commuting while working from home, the option to run around to the shops in a lunch break instead of only after work, not wasting time with sometimes utterly pointless social obligations, etc, leaves plenty of extra time in a day to actually do this exercise in. I also wouldn't be surprised to see that the extra exercise people get is running up and down the stairs 3 times per day and pales in comparison to what they actually do when working.
Exercies or "exercise"
Meditation and "strolling" are not actually exercise. I certainly see a lot more people at the moment taking several hours to walk a few hundred metres around a park, but as iamanidiot notes that sort of thing is probably much less exercise than they used to get just working a normal job. Indeed, it was particularly notable early on in the lockdown how many people took "one exercise per day" to mean "go and sit in the park with a book once per day". And of course the entire point of meditation is to not move around and just relax, which is pretty much the exact opposite of exercise.
These sorts of things likely have benefits for mental health and such, especially given the alternative of being shut inside a house all day doing nothing, but they're not going to make any difference in terms of getting fit or losing weight. It's all very well to study how people cope with lockdown, but it seems pretty odd to proclaim that people are doing more exercise, and then go on to note that by far the biggest increases were in activities that involve no exercise whatsoever.
"course the entire point of meditation is to not move around and just relax"
Actually, the point of meditation is supposed to be working towards enlightenment. Stasis and relaxation are merely means of entering a state where the mind becomes more receptive.
Re: "course the entire point of meditation is to not move around and just relax"
Actually, the point of meditation is supposed to be working towards enlightenment. Stasis and relaxation are merely means of entering a state where the mind becomes more receptive.
Oh really? And here's me thinking the point of Yoga is to give crafty 20 something guys a limitless supply of bored 30 something housewives to play hide the sausage with. Consider me enlightened.
Representative is a missing word
"After getting nearly 4,000 responses,"
None of those will be those who are depressed as a result of incaceration
Snowflakes....
For 18 to 24-year-olds, 36 per cent reported being irritable "quite a lot" and 8 per cent "all the time"; 30 per cent said they were distressed "quite a lot" and 31 per cent said they were upset "quite a lot". The over-65s were much more chilled. Only 10 per cent said they were distressed "quite a lot", with very few saying "all the time" for any of the listed negative feelings
Lets just reformat that a little:
18-24 36% irritable a lot - so 3 x more likely than the boomers
65+ 10% irritable a lot
18-24 30% distressed quite a lot - so 30+ x more likely than the boomers
65+ ~0% distressed quite a lot
18-24 31% upset quite a lot - so 31+ x more likely than the boomers
65+ ~0% upset quite a lot
So broadly speaking the young aren't coping and the old are doing just fine. It turns out then that sitting about in some coffee shop circle jerk inventing genders, dreaming up ways to be oppressed, and generally moaning about old people doesn't prepare you for life. Who knew?
Your country needs you to sit on your arse and watch telly - I mean, you're not being shipped to the trenches, you're not being conscripted into the army, you're not even being asked to do a hazardous job. You're practically bloody immune to Covid and your moaning about it more than those in the death zone.
Sorry kids, you're going to have to toughen up a little because you just don't have any other actual options. It's no good moaning about the boomers when your generation can't even handle staying home for a few weeks - you can still spend endless hours writing garbage on twitter and faking up a lifestyle in instagram, while pretending to influence your followers (who are mostly just dead accounts set up by bot networks anyway), or just stream yet another box set on netflix. You won't make it through your peak suicide years (35-45ish) in anything like your current horrifically incapable lifestyles.
which goes to show what ... getting a gold-plated pension can do for you, right Baby Boomers?
I think you'll find today's public sector workers still get the same solid gold pensions they always did, with just one or two of the smallest tweaks thrown in. It's the rest of us that are still suffering Gordon Browns first act as Chancer of the Exchequer.
Say or do?
> After getting nearly 4,000 responses
So all this survey did was ask some people (ones who stepped forward to tell the researchers how virtuous they are?) what they did. That is a long way short of having actual evidence that they weren't lying, mistaken, exaggerating or didn't understand the question. ISTM that surveys are far too unreliable to base any course of action on.
In fact, I asked 8,000 people online if they thought surveys were accurate ...... they replied in the affirmative to whatever question anyone who is willing to pay me for the results, cares to ask them. Of course, it might just have been one person or a 'bot, that responded 8000 times. I guess we'll never know.