Key points

Prolonged sitting is correlated with more depressive symptoms.

Depression risk is highest among teens who often sit for 30+ minutes.

"Movers" who don't sit for too long tend to be less depressed.

New research published in Frontiers in Psychology ( Liu et al., 2025 ) offers clear evidence linking teenagers' daily sedentary time and frequency of movement to their mental health. This paper highlights the strong link between habitual daily activity patterns and psychological well-being during adolescence .

For this study, researchers tracked 521 teens aged 13 to 18 using accelerometers to objectively monitor movement patterns, and had them fill out depression scale questionnaires. After analyzing the data, they found that teenagers who sat for long, uninterrupted stretc

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