Exergames, digital games that require bodily movement to play like Pokémon Go, existed before the COVID-19 pandemic and have been helping people improve physical and mental health through interactive game play since 1998, when Dance Dance revolution first came out.
A team of researchers from the University of Toronto Faculty of Kinesiology and Physical Education (KPE), working collaboratively with a University of Montreal research team, wanted to explore how exergaming behaviour before and during the pandemic affected levels of physical activity during the pandemic.
“We looked into whether a change in exergaming status – whether someone stopped, started or sustained exergaming, or never exergamed – from before to during the COVID-19 pandemic was related to changes in walking, moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) or meeting MVPA guidelines,” says Erin O'Loughlin, a post-doctoral fellow at KPE and first author of the study, published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research (JMIR) Serious Games.
“We also explored how many minutes per week sustained exergamers spent on exergames before and during the pandemic.”
681 participants from the 22-year Nicotine Dependence in Teens (NDIT) study provided data on walking, MVPA and exergaming before the pandemic, between 2017 and 2020, and during 2021, when the COVID-19 pandemic was declared.
“We found that 62 per cent of the participants had never exergamed, eight per cent started exergaming during the pandemic, 20 per cent stopped exergaming, and 10 per cent sustained exergaming,” says O’Loughlin. “We observed declines in all three physical activity indicators in all four exergaming groups.”
The more surprising findings were that participants who started exergaming during COVID-19 reported the highest levels of MVPA before and during the pandemic and the least declines, while sustained exergamers – participants who exergamed before and during the pandemic – reported the lowest levels of MVPA and the biggest declines during the pandemic.
New exergamers also reported more minutes of exergaming per week (a median of 85) compared to sustained exergamers, who increased exergaming by a median of 60 minutes per week.
The researchers hypothesize that those who began exergaming during the pandemic may have been more motivated towards physical activity and had the financial means to find new ways to exercise. Another reason could be that they paid close attention to public health advice about staying active during the pandemic.
Despite physical activity levels declining across all groups of exergamers during the pandemic, the researchers are optimistic about exergaming’s potential to enhance physical activity overall.
“Although starting and sustaining exergaming did not appear to help exergamers maintain pre-pandemic physical activity levels, it did contribute a substantial proportion of total physical activity in young adults and may still represent a useful option to promote physical activity during unusual or challenging times,” says Professor Catherine Sabiston, Canada Research Chair in Physical Activity and Mental Health.
The researchers suggest exergaming can be part of public health messaging around physical activity to engage individuals not interested in traditional types of physical activity programming or in addition to what a person is currently doing activity wise.
“Additionally, we should continue to consider the accessibility of exergaming for various populations and how increasing access may improve physical activity behaviours and health outcomes,” says Roxy O’Rourke, a PhD student at KPE and co-author of the study.