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No to harmful habits!

Steve
Connie Ma. Steve is watching football on a lazy Sunday (CC BY-SA)

Yet available survey data indicate that fewer than 1 in every 4 adolescents meets the recommended guidelines for physical activity: 60 minutes of moderate to vigorous physical activity daily.

WHO | Adolescents: health risks and solutions

According to WHO, most adolescents do not do enough physical activity. But lack of physical activity is not the only problem: there are other unhealthy behaviors that, when they become habitual, are called toxic habits or harmful habits.

To combat these toxic habits, we will promote good habits among our classmates, in our classroom and in the other courses of our Educational Center. We will do this by means of posters, which will be displayed in a clearly visible place of the Center: in a hallway or in the lobby of the entrance, for example.

Research

Toxic habits in adolescents

Harmful or toxic habits are repeated behaviors that seriously impair health.

To begin with, look at this presentation that talks about harmful habits for health.

There are several harmful habits that can affect boys and girls of your age:

Sedentary lifestyle

One of the most common harmful habits is sedentarism, consisting of a lifestyle with little physical activity. It is a real health problem.

A sedentary lifestyle, with a low degree of physical activity, leads to a low energy expenditure, and is a risk factor in adulthood, for the appearance of cardiovascular diseases and other chronic diseases.

In the website of the agency SINC you can see a video on sedentarism in adolescence.

Technological insomnia

Smartphone-bed
m01229. Smartphone and Bedtime (CC BY)

In recent years a new toxic habit, known as technological insomnia, has appeared. It consists of a prolonged use of new technologies (mobile phone, console) before sleeping, stealing hours to sleep. This habit is associated with less sleep and more daytime drowsiness; it is a growing problem.

Teenagers are sleeping less and less because of their mobile. Many have the perception that sleep is a waste of time.

Here you have a video that talks about this problem.

Harmful substances

One of the most harmful toxic habits is the consumption of substances harmful to health, such as alcohol, tobacco, drugs ...

33.2% of girls between 14 and 18 years old and 29.6% of boys smoke, according to data from the Ministry of Health. A model that has been repeating for years and that worries lung cancer specialists, who fear that the advances achieved in the last years against this tumor, the one with the greatest social impact in Spain, will be damaged.

Scientists know that alcohol consumption negatively affects the brain. Lately, the concern is greater as in recent years increased among young people to practice drinking large amounts of alcohol for a short period of time. This practice has become a health problem in Western countries.

Other habits

Are there more toxic habits that affect the health of adolescents? Have a discussion between the team members and expose the conclusions to the other teams.

Task

No Smoking
Maklay62. No Smoking (Public Domain)

You will work in teams of three or four people with the objective of producing posters that summarize the most important information of what you have researched and your reflections and contributions. This task can be developed in the classroom of Plastic, Visual and Audiovisual Education.

  • You will have to make compositions that transmit basic emotions (calm, violence, freedom, oppression, joy, sadness, etc.) using various graphic resources (chiaroscuro, lines, dots, textures, colors, etc.).
  • You will use the graphic techniques proposed by your teacher, applying them in an ideal way to the objective of the activity.
  • You can use cut paper and other recycled materials to create abstract or figurative shapes.
  • The posters must be medium or large in size: for example DIN A3 format (297 × 420 mm).

The posters will answer one of these questions:

  • What are the main toxic habits?
  • What problems do toxic habits cause in some people?
  • What proposals come up to us to avoid toxic habits?


Once finished the posters, we will hang them on the walls of class and we can all appreciate them, adding comments with post-its. We must take photos of the posters or scan them, to be able to share them on the Web through a blog, web site, social networks ...

Assessment of the task

To evaluate the task, the following rubrics will be used:

Read them carefully before starting the work and check at the end if you meet the requirements contained therein.

Learning Journal

Write a new entry in your Journal now. Tell what you have learned in this task.