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Health Hazards of Homework

March 18, 2014 | Julie Greicius Pediatrics .

A new study by the Stanford Graduate School of Education and colleagues found that students in high-performing schools who did excessive hours of homework “experienced greater behavioral engagement in school but also more academic stress, physical health problems, and lack of balance in their lives.”

Those health problems ranged from stress, headaches, exhaustion, sleep deprivation, weight loss and stomach problems, to psycho-social effects like dropping activities, not seeing friends or family, and not pursuing hobbies they enjoy.

In the Stanford Report story about the research, Denise Pope , a senior lecturer at the Stanford Graduate School of Education and a co-author of the  study published in the  Journal of Experimental Education , says, “Our findings on the effects of homework challenge the traditional assumption that homework is inherently good.”

The study was based on survey data from a sample of 4,317 students from 10 high-performing high schools in California communities in which median household income exceeded $90,000. Of the students surveyed, homework volume averaged about 3.1 hours each night.

“It is time to re-evaluate how the school environment is preparing our high school student for today’s workplace,” says Neville Golden, MD , chief of adolescent medicine at Stanford Medicine Children’s Health and a professor at the School of Medicine. “This landmark study shows that excessive homework is counterproductive, leading to sleep deprivation, school stress and other health problems. Parents can best support their children in these demanding academic environments by advocating for them through direct communication with teachers and school administrators about homework load.”

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Education scholar Denise Pope has found that too much homework has negative effects on student well-being and behavioral engagement. (Image credit: L.A. Cicero)

A Stanford researcher found that too much homework can negatively affect kids, especially their lives away from school, where family, friends and activities matter.

“Our findings on the effects of homework challenge the traditional assumption that homework is inherently good,” wrote Denise Pope , a senior lecturer at the Stanford Graduate School of Education and a co-author of a study published in the Journal of Experimental Education .

The researchers used survey data to examine perceptions about homework, student well-being and behavioral engagement in a sample of 4,317 students from 10 high-performing high schools in upper-middle-class California communities. Along with the survey data, Pope and her colleagues used open-ended answers to explore the students’ views on homework.

Median household income exceeded $90,000 in these communities, and 93 percent of the students went on to college, either two-year or four-year.

Students in these schools average about 3.1 hours of homework each night.

“The findings address how current homework practices in privileged, high-performing schools sustain students’ advantage in competitive climates yet hinder learning, full engagement and well-being,” Pope wrote.

Pope and her colleagues found that too much homework can diminish its effectiveness and even be counterproductive. They cite prior research indicating that homework benefits plateau at about two hours per night, and that 90 minutes to two and a half hours is optimal for high school.

Their study found that too much homework is associated with:

* Greater stress: 56 percent of the students considered homework a primary source of stress, according to the survey data. Forty-three percent viewed tests as a primary stressor, while 33 percent put the pressure to get good grades in that category. Less than 1 percent of the students said homework was not a stressor.

* Reductions in health: In their open-ended answers, many students said their homework load led to sleep deprivation and other health problems. The researchers asked students whether they experienced health issues such as headaches, exhaustion, sleep deprivation, weight loss and stomach problems.

* Less time for friends, family and extracurricular pursuits: Both the survey data and student responses indicate that spending too much time on homework meant that students were “not meeting their developmental needs or cultivating other critical life skills,” according to the researchers. Students were more likely to drop activities, not see friends or family, and not pursue hobbies they enjoy.

A balancing act

The results offer empirical evidence that many students struggle to find balance between homework, extracurricular activities and social time, the researchers said. Many students felt forced or obligated to choose homework over developing other talents or skills.

Also, there was no relationship between the time spent on homework and how much the student enjoyed it. The research quoted students as saying they often do homework they see as “pointless” or “mindless” in order to keep their grades up.

“This kind of busy work, by its very nature, discourages learning and instead promotes doing homework simply to get points,” Pope said.

She said the research calls into question the value of assigning large amounts of homework in high-performing schools. Homework should not be simply assigned as a routine practice, she said.

“Rather, any homework assigned should have a purpose and benefit, and it should be designed to cultivate learning and development,” wrote Pope.

High-performing paradox

In places where students attend high-performing schools, too much homework can reduce their time to foster skills in the area of personal responsibility, the researchers concluded. “Young people are spending more time alone,” they wrote, “which means less time for family and fewer opportunities to engage in their communities.”

Student perspectives

The researchers say that while their open-ended or “self-reporting” methodology to gauge student concerns about homework may have limitations – some might regard it as an opportunity for “typical adolescent complaining” – it was important to learn firsthand what the students believe.

The paper was co-authored by Mollie Galloway from Lewis and Clark College and Jerusha Conner from Villanova University.

Media Contacts

Denise Pope, Stanford Graduate School of Education: (650) 725-7412, [email protected] Clifton B. Parker, Stanford News Service: (650) 725-0224, [email protected]

Is homework a necessary evil?

After decades of debate, researchers are still sorting out the truth about homework’s pros and cons. One point they can agree on: Quality assignments matter.

By Kirsten Weir

March 2016, Vol 47, No. 3

Print version: page 36

• Schools and Classrooms

Homework battles have raged for decades. For as long as kids have been whining about doing their homework, parents and education reformers have complained that homework's benefits are dubious. Meanwhile many teachers argue that take-home lessons are key to helping students learn. Now, as schools are shifting to the new (and hotly debated) Common Core curriculum standards, educators, administrators and researchers are turning a fresh eye toward the question of homework's value.

But when it comes to deciphering the research literature on the subject, homework is anything but an open book.

The 10-minute rule

In many ways, homework seems like common sense. Spend more time practicing multiplication or studying Spanish vocabulary and you should get better at math or Spanish. But it may not be that simple.

Homework can indeed produce academic benefits, such as increased understanding and retention of the material, says Duke University social psychologist Harris Cooper, PhD, one of the nation's leading homework researchers. But not all students benefit. In a review of studies published from 1987 to 2003, Cooper and his colleagues found that homework was linked to better test scores in high school and, to a lesser degree, in middle school. Yet they found only faint evidence that homework provided academic benefit in elementary school ( Review of Educational Research , 2006).

Then again, test scores aren't everything. Homework proponents also cite the nonacademic advantages it might confer, such as the development of personal responsibility, good study habits and time-management skills. But as to hard evidence of those benefits, "the jury is still out," says Mollie Galloway, PhD, associate professor of educational leadership at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon. "I think there's a focus on assigning homework because [teachers] think it has these positive outcomes for study skills and habits. But we don't know for sure that's the case."

Even when homework is helpful, there can be too much of a good thing. "There is a limit to how much kids can benefit from home study," Cooper says. He agrees with an oft-cited rule of thumb that students should do no more than 10 minutes a night per grade level — from about 10 minutes in first grade up to a maximum of about two hours in high school. Both the National Education Association and National Parent Teacher Association support that limit.

Beyond that point, kids don't absorb much useful information, Cooper says. In fact, too much homework can do more harm than good. Researchers have cited drawbacks, including boredom and burnout toward academic material, less time for family and extracurricular activities, lack of sleep and increased stress.

In a recent study of Spanish students, Rubén Fernández-Alonso, PhD, and colleagues found that students who were regularly assigned math and science homework scored higher on standardized tests. But when kids reported having more than 90 to 100 minutes of homework per day, scores declined ( Journal of Educational Psychology , 2015).

"At all grade levels, doing other things after school can have positive effects," Cooper says. "To the extent that homework denies access to other leisure and community activities, it's not serving the child's best interest."

Children of all ages need down time in order to thrive, says Denise Pope, PhD, a professor of education at Stanford University and a co-founder of Challenge Success, a program that partners with secondary schools to implement policies that improve students' academic engagement and well-being.

"Little kids and big kids need unstructured time for play each day," she says. Certainly, time for physical activity is important for kids' health and well-being. But even time spent on social media can help give busy kids' brains a break, she says.

All over the map

But are teachers sticking to the 10-minute rule? Studies attempting to quantify time spent on homework are all over the map, in part because of wide variations in methodology, Pope says.

A 2014 report by the Brookings Institution examined the question of homework, comparing data from a variety of sources. That report cited findings from a 2012 survey of first-year college students in which 38.4 percent reported spending six hours or more per week on homework during their last year of high school. That was down from 49.5 percent in 1986 ( The Brown Center Report on American Education , 2014).

The Brookings report also explored survey data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, which asked 9-, 13- and 17-year-old students how much homework they'd done the previous night. They found that between 1984 and 2012, there was a slight increase in homework for 9-year-olds, but homework amounts for 13- and 17-year-olds stayed roughly the same, or even decreased slightly.

Yet other evidence suggests that some kids might be taking home much more work than they can handle. Robert Pressman, PhD, and colleagues recently investigated the 10-minute rule among more than 1,100 students, and found that elementary-school kids were receiving up to three times as much homework as recommended. As homework load increased, so did family stress, the researchers found ( American Journal of Family Therapy , 2015).

Many high school students also seem to be exceeding the recommended amounts of homework. Pope and Galloway recently surveyed more than 4,300 students from 10 high-achieving high schools. Students reported bringing home an average of just over three hours of homework nightly ( Journal of Experiential Education , 2013).

On the positive side, students who spent more time on homework in that study did report being more behaviorally engaged in school — for instance, giving more effort and paying more attention in class, Galloway says. But they were not more invested in the homework itself. They also reported greater academic stress and less time to balance family, friends and extracurricular activities. They experienced more physical health problems as well, such as headaches, stomach troubles and sleep deprivation. "Three hours per night is too much," Galloway says.

In the high-achieving schools Pope and Galloway studied, more than 90 percent of the students go on to college. There's often intense pressure to succeed academically, from both parents and peers. On top of that, kids in these communities are often overloaded with extracurricular activities, including sports and clubs. "They're very busy," Pope says. "Some kids have up to 40 hours a week — a full-time job's worth — of extracurricular activities." And homework is yet one more commitment on top of all the others.

"Homework has perennially acted as a source of stress for students, so that piece of it is not new," Galloway says. "But especially in upper-middle-class communities, where the focus is on getting ahead, I think the pressure on students has been ratcheted up."

Yet homework can be a problem at the other end of the socioeconomic spectrum as well. Kids from wealthier homes are more likely to have resources such as computers, Internet connections, dedicated areas to do schoolwork and parents who tend to be more educated and more available to help them with tricky assignments. Kids from disadvantaged homes are more likely to work at afterschool jobs, or to be home without supervision in the evenings while their parents work multiple jobs, says Lea Theodore, PhD, a professor of school psychology at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. They are less likely to have computers or a quiet place to do homework in peace.

"Homework can highlight those inequities," she says.

Quantity vs. quality

One point researchers agree on is that for all students, homework quality matters. But too many kids are feeling a lack of engagement with their take-home assignments, many experts say. In Pope and Galloway's research, only 20 percent to 30 percent of students said they felt their homework was useful or meaningful.

"Students are assigned a lot of busywork. They're naming it as a primary stressor, but they don't feel it's supporting their learning," Galloway says.

"Homework that's busywork is not good for anyone," Cooper agrees. Still, he says, different subjects call for different kinds of assignments. "Things like vocabulary and spelling are learned through practice. Other kinds of courses require more integration of material and drawing on different skills."

But critics say those skills can be developed with many fewer hours of homework each week. Why assign 50 math problems, Pope asks, when 10 would be just as constructive? One Advanced Placement biology teacher she worked with through Challenge Success experimented with cutting his homework assignments by a third, and then by half. "Test scores didn't go down," she says. "You can have a rigorous course and not have a crazy homework load."

Still, changing the culture of homework won't be easy. Teachers-to-be get little instruction in homework during their training, Pope says. And despite some vocal parents arguing that kids bring home too much homework, many others get nervous if they think their child doesn't have enough. "Teachers feel pressured to give homework because parents expect it to come home," says Galloway. "When it doesn't, there's this idea that the school might not be doing its job."

Galloway argues teachers and school administrators need to set clear goals when it comes to homework — and parents and students should be in on the discussion, too. "It should be a broader conversation within the community, asking what's the purpose of homework? Why are we giving it? Who is it serving? Who is it not serving?"

Until schools and communities agree to take a hard look at those questions, those backpacks full of take-home assignments will probably keep stirring up more feelings than facts.

Further reading

• Cooper, H., Robinson, J. C., & Patall, E. A. (2006). Does homework improve academic achievement? A synthesis of research, 1987-2003. Review of Educational Research, 76 (1), 1–62. doi: 10.3102/00346543076001001
• Galloway, M., Connor, J., & Pope, D. (2013). Nonacademic effects of homework in privileged, high-performing high schools. The Journal of Experimental Education, 81 (4), 490–510. doi: 10.1080/00220973.2012.745469
• Pope, D., Brown, M., & Miles, S. (2015). Overloaded and underprepared: Strategies for stronger schools and healthy, successful kids . San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

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Does Homework Really Help Students Learn?

A conversation with a Wheelock researcher, a BU student, and a fourth-grade teacher

“Quality homework is engaging and relevant to kids’ lives,” says Wheelock’s Janine Bempechat. “It gives them autonomy and engages them in the community and with their families. In some subjects, like math, worksheets can be very helpful. It has to do with the value of practicing over and over.” Photo by iStock/Glenn Cook Photography

Do your homework.

If only it were that simple.

Educators have debated the merits of homework since the late 19th century. In recent years, amid concerns of some parents and teachers that children are being stressed out by too much homework, things have only gotten more fraught.

“Homework is complicated,” says developmental psychologist Janine Bempechat, a Wheelock College of Education & Human Development clinical professor. The author of the essay “ The Case for (Quality) Homework—Why It Improves Learning and How Parents Can Help ” in the winter 2019 issue of Education Next , Bempechat has studied how the debate about homework is influencing teacher preparation, parent and student beliefs about learning, and school policies.

She worries especially about socioeconomically disadvantaged students from low-performing schools who, according to research by Bempechat and others, get little or no homework.

BU Today  sat down with Bempechat and Erin Bruce (Wheelock’17,’18), a new fourth-grade teacher at a suburban Boston school, and future teacher freshman Emma Ardizzone (Wheelock) to talk about what quality homework looks like, how it can help children learn, and how schools can equip teachers to design it, evaluate it, and facilitate parents’ role in it.

BU Today: Parents and educators who are against homework in elementary school say there is no research definitively linking it to academic performance for kids in the early grades. You’ve said that they’re missing the point.

Bempechat : I think teachers assign homework in elementary school as a way to help kids develop skills they’ll need when they’re older—to begin to instill a sense of responsibility and to learn planning and organizational skills. That’s what I think is the greatest value of homework—in cultivating beliefs about learning and skills associated with academic success. If we greatly reduce or eliminate homework in elementary school, we deprive kids and parents of opportunities to instill these important learning habits and skills.

We do know that beginning in late middle school, and continuing through high school, there is a strong and positive correlation between homework completion and academic success.

That’s what I think is the greatest value of homework—in cultivating beliefs about learning and skills associated with academic success.

You talk about the importance of quality homework. What is that?

Quality homework is engaging and relevant to kids’ lives. It gives them autonomy and engages them in the community and with their families. In some subjects, like math, worksheets can be very helpful. It has to do with the value of practicing over and over.

What are your concerns about homework and low-income children?

The argument that some people make—that homework “punishes the poor” because lower-income parents may not be as well-equipped as affluent parents to help their children with homework—is very troubling to me. There are no parents who don’t care about their children’s learning. Parents don’t actually have to help with homework completion in order for kids to do well. They can help in other ways—by helping children organize a study space, providing snacks, being there as a support, helping children work in groups with siblings or friends.

Isn’t the discussion about getting rid of homework happening mostly in affluent communities?

Yes, and the stories we hear of kids being stressed out from too much homework—four or five hours of homework a night—are real. That’s problematic for physical and mental health and overall well-being. But the research shows that higher-income students get a lot more homework than lower-income kids.

Teachers may not have as high expectations for lower-income children. Schools should bear responsibility for providing supports for kids to be able to get their homework done—after-school clubs, community support, peer group support. It does kids a disservice when our expectations are lower for them.

The conversation around homework is to some extent a social class and social justice issue. If we eliminate homework for all children because affluent children have too much, we’re really doing a disservice to low-income children. They need the challenge, and every student can rise to the challenge with enough supports in place.

What did you learn by studying how education schools are preparing future teachers to handle homework?

My colleague, Margarita Jimenez-Silva, at the University of California, Davis, School of Education, and I interviewed faculty members at education schools, as well as supervising teachers, to find out how students are being prepared. And it seemed that they weren’t. There didn’t seem to be any readings on the research, or conversations on what high-quality homework is and how to design it.

Erin, what kind of training did you get in handling homework?

Bruce : I had phenomenal professors at Wheelock, but homework just didn’t come up. I did lots of student teaching. I’ve been in classrooms where the teachers didn’t assign any homework, and I’ve been in rooms where they assigned hours of homework a night. But I never even considered homework as something that was my decision. I just thought it was something I’d pull out of a book and it’d be done.

I started giving homework on the first night of school this year. My first assignment was to go home and draw a picture of the room where you do your homework. I want to know if it’s at a table and if there are chairs around it and if mom’s cooking dinner while you’re doing homework.

The second night I asked them to talk to a grown-up about how are you going to be able to get your homework done during the week. The kids really enjoyed it. There’s a running joke that I’m teaching life skills.

Friday nights, I read all my kids’ responses to me on their homework from the week and it’s wonderful. They pour their hearts out. It’s like we’re having a conversation on my couch Friday night.

It matters to know that the teacher cares about you and that what you think matters to the teacher. Homework is a vehicle to connect home and school…for parents to know teachers are welcoming to them and their families.

Bempechat : I can’t imagine that most new teachers would have the intuition Erin had in designing homework the way she did.

Ardizzone : Conversations with kids about homework, feeling you’re being listened to—that’s such a big part of wanting to do homework….I grew up in Westchester County. It was a pretty demanding school district. My junior year English teacher—I loved her—she would give us feedback, have meetings with all of us. She’d say, “If you have any questions, if you have anything you want to talk about, you can talk to me, here are my office hours.” It felt like she actually cared.

Bempechat : It matters to know that the teacher cares about you and that what you think matters to the teacher. Homework is a vehicle to connect home and school…for parents to know teachers are welcoming to them and their families.

Ardizzone : But can’t it lead to parents being overbearing and too involved in their children’s lives as students?

Bempechat : There’s good help and there’s bad help. The bad help is what you’re describing—when parents hover inappropriately, when they micromanage, when they see their children confused and struggling and tell them what to do.

Good help is when parents recognize there’s a struggle going on and instead ask informative questions: “Where do you think you went wrong?” They give hints, or pointers, rather than saying, “You missed this,” or “You didn’t read that.”

Bruce : I hope something comes of this. I hope BU or Wheelock can think of some way to make this a more pressing issue. As a first-year teacher, it was not something I even thought about on the first day of school—until a kid raised his hand and said, “Do we have homework?” It would have been wonderful if I’d had a plan from day one.

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Senior Contributing Editor

Sara Rimer A journalist for more than three decades, Sara Rimer worked at the Miami Herald , Washington Post and, for 26 years, the New York Times , where she was the New England bureau chief, and a national reporter covering education, aging, immigration, and other social justice issues. Her stories on the death penalty’s inequities were nominated for a Pulitzer Prize and cited in the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision outlawing the execution of people with intellectual disabilities. Her journalism honors include Columbia University’s Meyer Berger award for in-depth human interest reporting. She holds a BA degree in American Studies from the University of Michigan. Profile

She can be reached at [email protected] .

Comments & Discussion

Boston University moderates comments to facilitate an informed, substantive, civil conversation. Abusive, profane, self-promotional, misleading, incoherent or off-topic comments will be rejected. Moderators are staffed during regular business hours (EST) and can only accept comments written in English. Statistics or facts must include a citation or a link to the citation.

There are 81 comments on Does Homework Really Help Students Learn?

Insightful! The values about homework in elementary schools are well aligned with my intuition as a parent.

when i finish my work i do my homework and i sometimes forget what to do because i did not get enough sleep

same omg it does not help me it is stressful and if I have it in more than one class I hate it.

Same I think my parent wants to help me but, she doesn’t care if I get bad grades so I just try my best and my grades are great.

I think that last question about Good help from parents is not know to all parents, we do as our parents did or how we best think it can be done, so maybe coaching parents or giving them resources on how to help with homework would be very beneficial for the parent on how to help and for the teacher to have consistency and improve homework results, and of course for the child. I do see how homework helps reaffirm the knowledge obtained in the classroom, I also have the ability to see progress and it is a time I share with my kids

The answer to the headline question is a no-brainer – a more pressing problem is why there is a difference in how students from different cultures succeed. Perfect example is the student population at BU – why is there a majority population of Asian students and only about 3% black students at BU? In fact at some universities there are law suits by Asians to stop discrimination and quotas against admitting Asian students because the real truth is that as a group they are demonstrating better qualifications for admittance, while at the same time there are quotas and reduced requirements for black students to boost their portion of the student population because as a group they do more poorly in meeting admissions standards – and it is not about the Benjamins. The real problem is that in our PC society no one has the gazuntas to explore this issue as it may reveal that all people are not created equal after all. Or is it just environmental cultural differences??????

I get you have a concern about the issue but that is not even what the point of this article is about. If you have an issue please take this to the site we have and only post your opinion about the actual topic

This is not at all what the article is talking about.

This literally has nothing to do with the article brought up. You should really take your opinions somewhere else before you speak about something that doesn’t make sense.

we have the same name

so they have the same name what of it?

lol you tell her

totally agree

What does that have to do with homework, that is not what the article talks about AT ALL.

Yes, I think homework plays an important role in the development of student life. Through homework, students have to face challenges on a daily basis and they try to solve them quickly.I am an intense online tutor at 24x7homeworkhelp and I give homework to my students at that level in which they handle it easily.

More than two-thirds of students said they used alcohol and drugs, primarily marijuana, to cope with stress.

You know what’s funny? I got this assignment to write an argument for homework about homework and this article was really helpful and understandable, and I also agree with this article’s point of view.

I also got the same task as you! I was looking for some good resources and I found this! I really found this article useful and easy to understand, just like you! ^^

i think that homework is the best thing that a child can have on the school because it help them with their thinking and memory.

I am a child myself and i think homework is a terrific pass time because i can’t play video games during the week. It also helps me set goals.

Homework is not harmful ,but it will if there is too much

I feel like, from a minors point of view that we shouldn’t get homework. Not only is the homework stressful, but it takes us away from relaxing and being social. For example, me and my friends was supposed to hang at the mall last week but we had to postpone it since we all had some sort of work to do. Our minds shouldn’t be focused on finishing an assignment that in realty, doesn’t matter. I completely understand that we should have homework. I have to write a paper on the unimportance of homework so thanks.

homework isn’t that bad

Are you a student? if not then i don’t really think you know how much and how severe todays homework really is

i am a student and i do not enjoy homework because i practice my sport 4 out of the five days we have school for 4 hours and that’s not even counting the commute time or the fact i still have to shower and eat dinner when i get home. its draining!

i totally agree with you. these people are such boomers

why just why

they do make a really good point, i think that there should be a limit though. hours and hours of homework can be really stressful, and the extra work isn’t making a difference to our learning, but i do believe homework should be optional and extra credit. that would make it for students to not have the leaning stress of a assignment and if you have a low grade you you can catch up.

Studies show that homework improves student achievement in terms of improved grades, test results, and the likelihood to attend college. Research published in the High School Journal indicates that students who spent between 31 and 90 minutes each day on homework “scored about 40 points higher on the SAT-Mathematics subtest than their peers, who reported spending no time on homework each day, on average.” On both standardized tests and grades, students in classes that were assigned homework outperformed 69% of students who didn’t have homework. A majority of studies on homework’s impact – 64% in one meta-study and 72% in another – showed that take home assignments were effective at improving academic achievement. Research by the Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) concluded that increased homework led to better GPAs and higher probability of college attendance for high school boys. In fact, boys who attended college did more than three hours of additional homework per week in high school.

So how are your measuring student achievement? That’s the real question. The argument that doing homework is simply a tool for teaching responsibility isn’t enough for me. We can teach responsibility in a number of ways. Also the poor argument that parents don’t need to help with homework, and that students can do it on their own, is wishful thinking at best. It completely ignores neurodiverse students. Students in poverty aren’t magically going to find a space to do homework, a friend’s or siblings to help them do it, and snacks to eat. I feel like the author of this piece has never set foot in a classroom of students.

THIS. This article is pathetic coming from a university. So intellectually dishonest, refusing to address the havoc of capitalism and poverty plays on academic success in life. How can they in one sentence use poor kids in an argument and never once address that poor children have access to damn near 0 of the resources affluent kids have? Draw me a picture and let’s talk about feelings lmao what a joke is that gonna put food in their belly so they can have the calories to burn in order to use their brain to study? What about quiet their 7 other siblings that they share a single bedroom with for hours? Is it gonna force the single mom to magically be at home and at work at the same time to cook food while you study and be there to throw an encouraging word?

Also the “parents don’t need to be a parent and be able to guide their kid at all academically they just need to exist in the next room” is wild. Its one thing if a parent straight up is not equipped but to say kids can just figured it out is…. wow coming from an educator What’s next the teacher doesn’t need to teach cause the kid can just follow the packet and figure it out?

Well then get a tutor right? Oh wait you are poor only affluent kids can afford a tutor for their hours of homework a day were they on average have none of the worries a poor child does. Does this address that poor children are more likely to also suffer abuse and mental illness? Like mentioned what about kids that can’t learn or comprehend the forced standardized way? Just let em fail? These children regularly are not in “special education”(some of those are a joke in their own and full of neglect and abuse) programs cause most aren’t even acknowledged as having disabilities or disorders.

But yes all and all those pesky poor kids just aren’t being worked hard enough lol pretty sure poor children’s existence just in childhood is more work, stress, and responsibility alone than an affluent child’s entire life cycle. Love they never once talked about the quality of education in the classroom being so bad between the poor and affluent it can qualify as segregation, just basically blamed poor people for being lazy, good job capitalism for failing us once again!

why the hell?

you should feel bad for saying this, this article can be helpful for people who has to write a essay about it

This is more of a political rant than it is about homework

I know a teacher who has told his students their homework is to find something they are interested in, pursue it and then come share what they learn. The student responses are quite compelling. One girl taught herself German so she could talk to her grandfather. One boy did a research project on Nelson Mandela because the teacher had mentioned him in class. Another boy, a both on the autism spectrum, fixed his family’s computer. The list goes on. This is fourth grade. I think students are highly motivated to learn, when we step aside and encourage them.

The whole point of homework is to give the students a chance to use the material that they have been presented with in class. If they never have the opportunity to use that information, and discover that it is actually useful, it will be in one ear and out the other. As a science teacher, it is critical that the students are challenged to use the material they have been presented with, which gives them the opportunity to actually think about it rather than regurgitate “facts”. Well designed homework forces the student to think conceptually, as opposed to regurgitation, which is never a pretty sight

Wonderful discussion. and yes, homework helps in learning and building skills in students.

not true it just causes kids to stress

Homework can be both beneficial and unuseful, if you will. There are students who are gifted in all subjects in school and ones with disabilities. Why should the students who are gifted get the lucky break, whereas the people who have disabilities suffer? The people who were born with this “gift” go through school with ease whereas people with disabilities struggle with the work given to them. I speak from experience because I am one of those students: the ones with disabilities. Homework doesn’t benefit “us”, it only tears us down and put us in an abyss of confusion and stress and hopelessness because we can’t learn as fast as others. Or we can’t handle the amount of work given whereas the gifted students go through it with ease. It just brings us down and makes us feel lost; because no mater what, it feels like we are destined to fail. It feels like we weren’t “cut out” for success.

homework does help

here is the thing though, if a child is shoved in the face with a whole ton of homework that isn’t really even considered homework it is assignments, it’s not helpful. the teacher should make homework more of a fun learning experience rather than something that is dreaded

This article was wonderful, I am going to ask my teachers about extra, or at all giving homework.

I agree. Especially when you have homework before an exam. Which is distasteful as you’ll need that time to study. It doesn’t make any sense, nor does us doing homework really matters as It’s just facts thrown at us.

Homework is too severe and is just too much for students, schools need to decrease the amount of homework. When teachers assign homework they forget that the students have other classes that give them the same amount of homework each day. Students need to work on social skills and life skills.

I disagree.

Beyond achievement, proponents of homework argue that it can have many other beneficial effects. They claim it can help students develop good study habits so they are ready to grow as their cognitive capacities mature. It can help students recognize that learning can occur at home as well as at school. Homework can foster independent learning and responsible character traits. And it can give parents an opportunity to see what’s going on at school and let them express positive attitudes toward achievement.

Homework is helpful because homework helps us by teaching us how to learn a specific topic.

As a student myself, I can say that I have almost never gotten the full 9 hours of recommended sleep time, because of homework. (Now I’m writing an essay on it in the middle of the night D=)

I am a 10 year old kid doing a report about “Is homework good or bad” for homework before i was going to do homework is bad but the sources from this site changed my mind!

Homeowkr is god for stusenrs

I agree with hunter because homework can be so stressful especially with this whole covid thing no one has time for homework and every one just wants to get back to there normal lives it is especially stressful when you go on a 2 week vaca 3 weeks into the new school year and and then less then a week after you come back from the vaca you are out for over a month because of covid and you have no way to get the assignment done and turned in

As great as homework is said to be in the is article, I feel like the viewpoint of the students was left out. Every where I go on the internet researching about this topic it almost always has interviews from teachers, professors, and the like. However isn’t that a little biased? Of course teachers are going to be for homework, they’re not the ones that have to stay up past midnight completing the homework from not just one class, but all of them. I just feel like this site is one-sided and you should include what the students of today think of spending four hours every night completing 6-8 classes worth of work.

Are we talking about homework or practice? Those are two very different things and can result in different outcomes.

Homework is a graded assignment. I do not know of research showing the benefits of graded assignments going home.

Practice; however, can be extremely beneficial, especially if there is some sort of feedback (not a grade but feedback). That feedback can come from the teacher, another student or even an automated grading program.

As a former band director, I assigned daily practice. I never once thought it would be appropriate for me to require the students to turn in a recording of their practice for me to grade. Instead, I had in-class assignments/assessments that were graded and directly related to the practice assigned.

I would really like to read articles on “homework” that truly distinguish between the two.

oof i feel bad good luck!

thank you guys for the artical because I have to finish an assingment. yes i did cite it but just thanks

thx for the article guys.

Homework is good

I think homework is helpful AND harmful. Sometimes u can’t get sleep bc of homework but it helps u practice for school too so idk.

I agree with this Article. And does anyone know when this was published. I would like to know.

It was published FEb 19, 2019.

Studies have shown that homework improved student achievement in terms of improved grades, test results, and the likelihood to attend college.

i think homework can help kids but at the same time not help kids

This article is so out of touch with majority of homes it would be laughable if it wasn’t so incredibly sad.

There is no value to homework all it does is add stress to already stressed homes. Parents or adults magically having the time or energy to shepherd kids through homework is dome sort of 1950’s fantasy.

What lala land do these teachers live in?

Homework gives noting to the kid

Homework is Bad

homework is bad.

why do kids even have homework?

Comments are closed.

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Homework – Top 3 Pros and Cons

Pro/Con Arguments | Discussion Questions | Take Action | Sources | More Debates

From dioramas to book reports, from algebraic word problems to research projects, whether students should be given homework, as well as the type and amount of homework, has been debated for over a century. [ 1 ]

While we are unsure who invented homework, we do know that the word “homework” dates back to ancient Rome. Pliny the Younger asked his followers to practice their speeches at home. Memorization exercises as homework continued through the Middle Ages and Enlightenment by monks and other scholars. [ 45 ]

In the 19th century, German students of the Volksschulen or “People’s Schools” were given assignments to complete outside of the school day. This concept of homework quickly spread across Europe and was brought to the United States by Horace Mann , who encountered the idea in Prussia. [ 45 ]

In the early 1900s, progressive education theorists, championed by the magazine Ladies’ Home Journal , decried homework’s negative impact on children’s physical and mental health, leading California to ban homework for students under 15 from 1901 until 1917. In the 1930s, homework was portrayed as child labor, which was newly illegal, but the prevailing argument was that kids needed time to do household chores. [ 1 ] [ 2 ] [ 45 ] [ 46 ]

Public opinion swayed again in favor of homework in the 1950s due to concerns about keeping up with the Soviet Union’s technological advances during the Cold War . And, in 1986, the US government included homework as an educational quality boosting tool. [ 3 ] [ 45 ]

A 2014 study found kindergarteners to fifth graders averaged 2.9 hours of homework per week, sixth to eighth graders 3.2 hours per teacher, and ninth to twelfth graders 3.5 hours per teacher. A 2014-2019 study found that teens spent about an hour a day on homework. [ 4 ] [ 44 ]

Beginning in 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic complicated the very idea of homework as students were schooling remotely and many were doing all school work from home. Washington Post journalist Valerie Strauss asked, “Does homework work when kids are learning all day at home?” While students were mostly back in school buildings in fall 2021, the question remains of how effective homework is as an educational tool. [ 47 ]

Is Homework Beneficial?

Pro 1 Homework improves student achievement. Studies have shown that homework improved student achievement in terms of improved grades, test results, and the likelihood to attend college. Research published in the High School Journal indicated that students who spent between 31 and 90 minutes each day on homework “scored about 40 points higher on the SAT-Mathematics subtest than their peers, who reported spending no time on homework each day, on average.” [ 6 ] Students in classes that were assigned homework outperformed 69% of students who didn’t have homework on both standardized tests and grades. A majority of studies on homework’s impact – 64% in one meta-study and 72% in another – showed that take-home assignments were effective at improving academic achievement. [ 7 ] [ 8 ] Research by the Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) concluded that increased homework led to better GPAs and higher probability of college attendance for high school boys. In fact, boys who attended college did more than three hours of additional homework per week in high school. [ 10 ] Read More

Pro 2 Homework helps to reinforce classroom learning, while developing good study habits and life skills. Students typically retain only 50% of the information teachers provide in class, and they need to apply that information in order to truly learn it. Abby Freireich and Brian Platzer, co-founders of Teachers Who Tutor NYC, explained, “at-home assignments help students learn the material taught in class. Students require independent practice to internalize new concepts… [And] these assignments can provide valuable data for teachers about how well students understand the curriculum.” [ 11 ] [ 49 ] Elementary school students who were taught “strategies to organize and complete homework,” such as prioritizing homework activities, collecting study materials, note-taking, and following directions, showed increased grades and more positive comments on report cards. [ 17 ] Research by the City University of New York noted that “students who engage in self-regulatory processes while completing homework,” such as goal-setting, time management, and remaining focused, “are generally more motivated and are higher achievers than those who do not use these processes.” [ 18 ] Homework also helps students develop key skills that they’ll use throughout their lives: accountability, autonomy, discipline, time management, self-direction, critical thinking, and independent problem-solving. Freireich and Platzer noted that “homework helps students acquire the skills needed to plan, organize, and complete their work.” [ 12 ] [ 13 ] [ 14 ] [ 15 ] [ 49 ] Read More

Pro 3 Homework allows parents to be involved with children’s learning. Thanks to take-home assignments, parents are able to track what their children are learning at school as well as their academic strengths and weaknesses. [ 12 ] Data from a nationwide sample of elementary school students show that parental involvement in homework can improve class performance, especially among economically disadvantaged African-American and Hispanic students. [ 20 ] Research from Johns Hopkins University found that an interactive homework process known as TIPS (Teachers Involve Parents in Schoolwork) improves student achievement: “Students in the TIPS group earned significantly higher report card grades after 18 weeks (1 TIPS assignment per week) than did non-TIPS students.” [ 21 ] Homework can also help clue parents in to the existence of any learning disabilities their children may have, allowing them to get help and adjust learning strategies as needed. Duke University Professor Harris Cooper noted, “Two parents once told me they refused to believe their child had a learning disability until homework revealed it to them.” [ 12 ] Read More

Con 1 Too much homework can be harmful. A poll of California high school students found that 59% thought they had too much homework. 82% of respondents said that they were “often or always stressed by schoolwork.” High-achieving high school students said too much homework leads to sleep deprivation and other health problems such as headaches, exhaustion, weight loss, and stomach problems. [ 24 ] [ 28 ] [ 29 ] Alfie Kohn, an education and parenting expert, said, “Kids should have a chance to just be kids… it’s absurd to insist that children must be engaged in constructive activities right up until their heads hit the pillow.” [ 27 ] Emmy Kang, a mental health counselor, explained, “More than half of students say that homework is their primary source of stress, and we know what stress can do on our bodies.” [ 48 ] Excessive homework can also lead to cheating: 90% of middle school students and 67% of high school students admit to copying someone else’s homework, and 43% of college students engaged in “unauthorized collaboration” on out-of-class assignments. Even parents take shortcuts on homework: 43% of those surveyed admitted to having completed a child’s assignment for them. [ 30 ] [ 31 ] [ 32 ] Read More

Con 2 Homework exacerbates the digital divide or homework gap. Kiara Taylor, financial expert, defined the digital divide as “the gap between demographics and regions that have access to modern information and communications technology and those that don’t. Though the term now encompasses the technical and financial ability to utilize available technology—along with access (or a lack of access) to the Internet—the gap it refers to is constantly shifting with the development of technology.” For students, this is often called the homework gap. [ 50 ] [ 51 ] 30% (about 15 to 16 million) public school students either did not have an adequate internet connection or an appropriate device, or both, for distance learning. Completing homework for these students is more complicated (having to find a safe place with an internet connection, or borrowing a laptop, for example) or impossible. [ 51 ] A Hispanic Heritage Foundation study found that 96.5% of students across the country needed to use the internet for homework, and nearly half reported they were sometimes unable to complete their homework due to lack of access to the internet or a computer, which often resulted in lower grades. [ 37 ] [ 38 ] One study concluded that homework increases social inequality because it “potentially serves as a mechanism to further advantage those students who already experience some privilege in the school system while further disadvantaging those who may already be in a marginalized position.” [ 39 ] Read More

Con 3 Homework does not help younger students, and may not help high school students. We’ve known for a while that homework does not help elementary students. A 2006 study found that “homework had no association with achievement gains” when measured by standardized tests results or grades. [ 7 ] Fourth grade students who did no homework got roughly the same score on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) math exam as those who did 30 minutes of homework a night. Students who did 45 minutes or more of homework a night actually did worse. [ 41 ] Temple University professor Kathryn Hirsh-Pasek said that homework is not the most effective tool for young learners to apply new information: “They’re learning way more important skills when they’re not doing their homework.” [ 42 ] In fact, homework may not be helpful at the high school level either. Alfie Kohn, author of The Homework Myth, stated, “I interviewed high school teachers who completely stopped giving homework and there was no downside, it was all upside.” He explains, “just because the same kids who get more homework do a little better on tests, doesn’t mean the homework made that happen.” [ 52 ] Read More

Discussion Questions

1. Is homework beneficial? Consider the study data, your personal experience, and other types of information. Explain your answer(s).

2. If homework were banned, what other educational strategies would help students learn classroom material? Explain your answer(s).

3. How has homework been helpful to you personally? How has homework been unhelpful to you personally? Make carefully considered lists for both sides.

Take Action

1. Examine an argument in favor of quality homework assignments from Janine Bempechat.

2. Explore Oxford Learning’s infographic on the effects of homework on students.

3. Consider Joseph Lathan’s argument that homework promotes inequality .

4. Consider how you felt about the issue before reading this article. After reading the pros and cons on this topic, has your thinking changed? If so, how? List two to three ways. If your thoughts have not changed, list two to three ways your better understanding of the “other side of the issue” now helps you better argue your position.

5. Push for the position and policies you support by writing US national senators and representatives .

More School Debate Topics

Should K-12 Students Dissect Animals in Science Classrooms? – Proponents say dissecting real animals is a better learning experience. Opponents say the practice is bad for the environment.

Should Students Have to Wear School Uniforms? – Proponents say uniforms may increase student safety. Opponents say uniforms restrict expression.

Should Corporal Punishment Be Used in K-12 Schools? – Proponents say corporal punishment is an appropriate discipline. Opponents say it inflicts long-lasting physical and mental harm on students.

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Homework could have an impact on kids’ health. Should schools ban it?

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Reformers in the Progressive Era (from the 1890s to 1920s) depicted homework as a “sin” that deprived children of their playtime . Many critics voice similar concerns today.

Yet there are many parents who feel that from early on, children need to do homework if they are to succeed in an increasingly competitive academic culture. School administrators and policy makers have also weighed in, proposing various policies on homework .

So, does homework help or hinder kids?

For the last 10 years, my colleagues and I have been investigating international patterns in homework using databases like the Trends in Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) . If we step back from the heated debates about homework and look at how homework is used around the world, we find the highest homework loads are associated with countries that have lower incomes and higher social inequality.

Does homework result in academic success?

Let’s first look at the global trends on homework.

Undoubtedly, homework is a global phenomenon ; students from all 59 countries that participated in the 2007 Trends in Math and Science Study (TIMSS) reported getting homework. Worldwide, only less than 7% of fourth graders said they did no homework.

TIMSS is one of the few data sets that allow us to compare many nations on how much homework is given (and done). And the data show extreme variation.

For example, in some nations, like Algeria, Kuwait and Morocco, more than one in five fourth graders reported high levels of homework. In Japan, less than 3% of students indicated they did more than four hours of homework on a normal school night.

TIMSS data can also help to dispel some common stereotypes. For instance, in East Asia, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Japan – countries that had the top rankings on TIMSS average math achievement – reported rates of heavy homework that were below the international mean.

In the Netherlands, nearly one out of five fourth graders reported doing no homework on an average school night, even though Dutch fourth graders put their country in the top 10 in terms of average math scores in 2007.

Going by TIMSS data, the US is neither “ A Nation at Rest” as some have claimed, nor a nation straining under excessive homework load . Fourth and eighth grade US students fall in the middle of the 59 countries in the TIMSS data set, although only 12% of US fourth graders reported high math homework loads compared to an international average of 21%.

So, is homework related to high academic success?

At a national level, the answer is clearly no. Worldwide, homework is not associated with high national levels of academic achievement .

But, the TIMSS can’t be used to determine if homework is actually helping or hurting academic performance overall , it can help us see how much homework students are doing, and what conditions are associated with higher national levels of homework.

We have typically found that the highest homework loads are associated with countries that have lower incomes and higher levels of social inequality – not hallmarks that most countries would want to emulate.

Impact of homework on kids

TIMSS data also show us how even elementary school kids are being burdened with large amounts of homework.

Almost 10% of fourth graders worldwide (one in 10 children) reported spending multiple hours on homework each night. Globally, one in five fourth graders report 30 minutes or more of homework in math three to four times a week.

These reports of large homework loads should worry parents, teachers and policymakers alike.

Empirical studies have linked excessive homework to sleep disruption , indicating a negative relationship between the amount of homework, perceived stress and physical health.

What constitutes excessive amounts of homework varies by age, and may also be affected by cultural or family expectations. Young adolescents in middle school, or teenagers in high school, can study for longer duration than elementary school children.

But for elementary school students, even 30 minutes of homework a night, if combined with other sources of academic stress, can have a negative impact . Researchers in China have linked homework of two or more hours per night with sleep disruption .

Even though some cultures may normalize long periods of studying for elementary age children, there is no evidence to support that this level of homework has clear academic benefits . Also, when parents and children conflict over homework, and strong negative emotions are created, homework can actually have a negative association with academic achievement.

Should there be “no homework” policies?

Administrators and policymakers have not been reluctant to wade into the debates on homework and to formulate policies . France’s president, Francois Hollande, even proposed that homework be banned because it may have inegaliatarian effects.

However, “zero-tolerance” homework policies for schools, or nations, are likely to create as many problems as they solve because of the wide variation of homework effects. Contrary to what Hollande said, research suggests that homework is not a likely source of social class differences in academic achievement .

Homework, in fact, is an important component of education for students in the middle and upper grades of schooling.

Policymakers and researchers should look more closely at the connection between poverty, inequality and higher levels of homework. Rather than seeing homework as a “solution,” policymakers should question what facets of their educational system might impel students, teachers and parents to increase homework loads.

At the classroom level, in setting homework, teachers need to communicate with their peers and with parents to assure that the homework assigned overall for a grade is not burdensome, and that it is indeed having a positive effect.

Perhaps, teachers can opt for a more individualized approach to homework. If teachers are careful in selecting their assignments – weighing the student’s age, family situation and need for skill development – then homework can be tailored in ways that improve the chance of maximum positive impact for any given student.

I strongly suspect that when teachers face conditions such as pressure to meet arbitrary achievement goals, lack of planning time or little autonomy over curriculum, homework becomes an easy option to make up what could not be covered in class.

Whatever the reason, the fact is a significant percentage of elementary school children around the world are struggling with large homework loads. That alone could have long-term negative consequences for their academic success.

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Opinion | Social-Emotional Learning

If we’re serious about student well-being, we must change the systems students learn in, here are five steps high schools can take to support students' mental health., by tim klein and belle liang     oct 14, 2022.

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This article is part of the collection: Making Sense of K-12 Student Mental Health.

Educators and parents started this school year with bated breath. Last year’s stress led to record levels of teacher burnout and mental health challenges for students.

Even before the pandemic, a mental health crisis among high schoolers loomed. According to a survey administered by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 2019, 37 percent of high school students said they experienced persistent sadness or hopelessness and 19 percent reported suicidality. In response, more than half of all U.S. states mandated that schools have a mental health curriculum or include mental health in their standards .

As mental health professionals and co-authors of a book about the pressure and stress facing high school students, we’ve spent our entire careers supporting students’ mental health. Traditionally, mental health interventions are individualized and they focus on helping students manage and change their behaviors to cope with challenges they’re facing. But while working with schools and colleges across the globe as we conducted research for our book , we realized that most interventions don’t address systemic issues causing mental health problems in the first place.

It’s time we acknowledge that our education systems are directly contributing to the youth mental health crisis. And if we are serious about student well-being, we must change the systems they learn in.

Here are five bold steps that high schools can take to boost mental health.

Limit Homework or Make it Optional

Imagine applying for a job, and the hiring manager informs you that in addition to a full workday in the office, you’ll be assigned three more hours of work every night. Does this sound like a healthy work-life balance? Most adults would consider this expectation ridiculous and unsustainable. Yet, this is the workload most schools place on high school students.

Research shows that excessive homework leads to increased stress, physical health problems and a lack of balance in students' lives. And studies have shown that more than two hours of daily homework can be counterproductive , yet many teachers assign more.

Homework proponents argue that homework improves academic performance. Indeed, a meta-analysis of research on this issue found a correlation between homework and achievement. But correlation isn’t causation. Does homework cause achievement or do high achievers do more homework? While it’s likely that homework completion signals student engagement, which in turn leads to academic achievement, there’s little evidence to suggest that homework itself improves engagement in learning.

Another common argument is that homework helps students develop skills related to problem-solving, time-management and self-direction. But these skills can be explicitly taught during the school day rather than after school.

Limiting homework or moving to an optional homework policy not only supports student well-being, but it can also create a more equitable learning environment. According to the American Psychological Association, students from more affluent families are more likely to have access to resources such as devices, internet, dedicated work space and the support necessary to complete their work successfully—and homework can highlight those inequities .

Whether a school limits homework or makes it optional, it’s critical to remember that more important than the amount of homework assigned, is designing the type of activities that engage students in learning. When students are intrinsically motivated to do their homework, they are more engaged in the work, which in turn is associated with academic achievement.

Cap the Number of APs Students Can Take

Advanced Placement courses give students a taste of college-level work and, in theory, allow them to earn college credits early. Getting good grades on AP exams is associated with higher GPAs in high school and success in college, but the research tends to be correlational rather than causational.

In 2008, a little over 180,000 students took three or more AP exams. By 2018, that number had ballooned to almost 350,000 students .

However, this expansion has come at the expense of student well-being.

Over the years, we’ve heard many students express that they feel pressure to take as many AP classes as possible, which overloads them with work. That’s troubling because studies show that students who take AP classes and exams are twice as likely to report adverse physical and emotional health .

AP courses and exams also raise complex issues of equity. In 2019, two out of three Harvard freshmen reported taking AP Calculus in high school, according to Jeff Selingo, author of “ Who Gets In and Why: A Year Inside College Admissions ,” yet only half of all high schools in the country offer the course. And opportunity gaps exist for advanced coursework such as AP courses and dual enrollment, with inequitable distribution of funding and support impacting which students are enrolling and experiencing success. According to the Center for American Progress, “National data from the Civil Rights Data Collection show that students who are Black, Indigenous, and other non-Black people of color (BIPOC) are not enrolled in AP courses at rates comparable to their white and Asian peers and experience less success when they are—and the analysis for this report finds this to be true even when they attend schools with similar levels of AP course availability.”

Limiting the number of AP courses students take can protect mental health and create a more equitable experience for students.

Eliminate Class Rankings

In a study we conducted about mental health problems among high school girls, we found that a primary driver of stress was their perception of school as a hypercompetitive, zero-sum game where pervasive peer pressure to perform reigns supreme.

Class rankings fuel these cutthroat environments. They send a toxic message to young people: success requires doing better than your peers.

Ranking systems help highly selective colleges decide which students to admit or reject for admission. The purpose of high school is to develop students to their own full potential, rather than causing them to fixate on measuring up to others. Research shows that ranking systems undercut students’ learning and damage social relationships by turning peers into opponents.

Eliminating class rankings sends a powerful message to students that they are more than a number.

Become an Admission Test Objector

COVID-19 ushered in the era of test-optional admissions. De-centering standardized tests in the college application process is unequivocally a good thing. Standardized tests don’t predict student success in college , they only widen the achievement gap between privileged and underprivileged students and damage students' mental health .

Going “test optional” is an excellent first step, but it's not enough.

Even as more colleges have made tests optional, affluent students submit test scores at a higher rate than their lower-income peers and are admitted at higher rates , suggesting that testing still gives them an edge.

High schools must adhere to standardized test mandates, but they don’t have to endorse them. They can become test objectors by publicly proclaiming that these tests hold no inherent value. They can stop teaching to the test and educate parents on why they are doing so. Counseling departments can inform colleges that their school is a test objector so admission teams won’t penalize students.

Of course, students and families will still find ways to wield these tests as a competitive advantage. Over time, the more schools and educators unite to denounce these tests, the less power they will hold over students and families.

Big change starts with small steps.

Stand For What You Value

Critics may argue that such policies might hurt student outcomes. How will colleges evaluate school rigor if we limit AP courses and homework? How will students demonstrate their merits without class rankings and standardized test scores?

The truth is, the best school systems in the world succeed without homework, standardized test scores or an obsession with rigorous courses. And many U.S. schools have found creative and empowering ways to showcase student merit beyond rankings and test scores.

If we aren’t willing to change policies and practices that have been shown to harm students’ well-being, we have to ask ourselves: Do we really value mental health?

Thankfully, it doesn’t have to be an either/or scenario: We can design school systems that help students thrive academically and psychologically.

Belle Liang and Tim Klein are mental health professionals and co-authors of “How To Navigate Life: The New Science of Finding Your Way in School, Career and Life.”

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Homework Struggles May Not Be a Behavior Problem

Exploring some options to understand and help..

Posted August 2, 2022 | Reviewed by Abigail Fagan

• What Is Anxiety?
• Take our Generalized Anxiety Disorder Test
• Find a therapist to overcome anxiety
• Mental health challenges and neurodevelopmental differences directly affect children's ability to do homework.
• Understanding what difficulties are getting in the way—beyond the usual explanation of a behavior problem—is key.
• Sleep and mental health needs can take priority over homework completion.

Chelsea was in 10th grade the first time I told her directly to stop doing her homework and get some sleep. I had been working with her since she was in middle school, treating her anxiety disorder. She deeply feared disappointing anyone—especially her teachers—and spent hours trying to finish homework perfectly. The more tired and anxious she got, the harder it got for her to finish the assignments.

One night Chelsea called me in despair, feeling hopeless. She was exhausted and couldn’t think straight. She felt like a failure and that she was a burden to everyone because she couldn’t finish her homework.

She was shocked when I told her that my prescription for her was to go to sleep now—not to figure out how to finish her work. I told her to leave her homework incomplete and go to sleep. We briefly discussed how we would figure it out the next day, with her mom and her teachers. At that moment, it clicked for her that it was futile to keep working—because nothing was getting done.

This was an inflection point for her awareness of when she was emotionally over-cooked and when she needed to stop and take a break or get some sleep. We repeated versions of this phone call several times over the course of her high school and college years, but she got much better at being able to do this for herself most of the time.

When Mental Health Symptoms Interfere with Homework

Kids with mental health or neurodevelopmental challenges often struggle mightily with homework. Challenges can come up in every step of the homework process, including, but not limited to:

• Remembering and tracking assignments and materials
• Getting the mental energy/organization to start homework
• Filtering distractions enough to persist with assignments
• Understanding unspoken or implied parts of the homework
• Remembering to bring finished homework to class
• Being in class long enough to know the material
• Tolerating the fear of not knowing or failing
• Not giving up the assignment because of a panic attack
• Tolerating frustration—such as not understanding—without emotional dysregulation
• Being able to ask for help—from a peer or a teacher and not being afraid to reach out

This list is hardly comprehensive. ADHD , autism spectrum disorder, social anxiety , generalized anxiety, panic disorder, depression , dysregulation, and a range of other neurodevelopmental and mental health challenges cause numerous learning differences and symptoms that can specifically and frequently interfere with getting homework done.

The Usual Diagnosis for Homework Problems is "Not Trying Hard Enough"

Unfortunately, when kids frequently struggle to meet homework demands, teachers and parents typically default to one explanation of the problem: The child is making a choice not to do their homework. That is the default “diagnosis” in classrooms and living rooms. And once this framework is drawn, the student is often seen as not trying hard enough, disrespectful, manipulative, or just plain lazy.

The fundamental disconnect here is that the diagnosis of homework struggles as a behavioral choice is, in fact, only one explanation, while there are so many other diagnoses and differences that impair children's ability to consistently do their homework. If we are trying to create solutions based on only one understanding of the problem, the solutions will not work. More devastatingly, the wrong solutions can worsen the child’s mental health and their long-term engagement with school and learning.

To be clear, we aren’t talking about children who sometimes struggle with or skip homework—kids who can change and adapt their behaviors and patterns in response to the outcomes of that struggle. For this discussion, we are talking about children with mental health and/or neurodevelopmental symptoms and challenges that create chronic difficulties with meeting homework demands.

How Can You Help a Child Who Struggles with Homework?

How can you help your child who is struggling to meet homework demands because of their ADHD, depression, anxiety, OCD , school avoidance, or any other neurodevelopmental or mental health differences? Let’s break this down into two broad areas—things you can do at home, and things you can do in communication with the school.

Helping at Home

The following suggestions for managing school demands at home can feel counterintuitive to parents—because we usually focus on helping our kids to complete their tasks. But mental health needs jump the line ahead of task completion. And starting at home will be key to developing an idea of what needs to change at school.

• Set an end time in the evening after which no more homework will be attempted. Kids need time to decompress and they need sleep—and pushing homework too close to or past bedtime doesn’t serve their educational needs. Even if your child hasn’t been able to approach the homework at all, even if they have avoided and argued the whole evening, it is still important for everyone to have a predictable time to shut down the whole process.
• If there are arguments almost every night about homework, if your child isn’t starting homework or finishing it, reframe it from failure into information. It’s data to put into problem-solving. We need to consider other possible explanations besides “behavioral choice” when trying to understand the problem and create effective solutions. What problems are getting in the way of our child’s meeting homework demands that their peers are meeting most of the time?
• Try not to argue about homework. If you can check your own anxiety and frustration, it can be more productive to ally with your child and be curious with them. Kids usually can’t tell you a clear “why” but maybe they can tell you how they are feeling and what they are thinking. And if your child can’t talk about it or just keeps saying “I don't know,” try not to push. Come back another time. Rushing, forcing, yelling, and threatening will predictably not help kids do homework.

Helping at School

The second area to explore when your neurodiverse child struggles frequently with homework is building communication and connections with school and teachers. Some places to focus on include the following.

• Label your child’s diagnoses and break down specific symptoms for the teachers and school team. Nonjudgmental, but specific language is essential for teachers to understand your child’s struggles. Breaking their challenges down into the problems specific to homework can help with building solutions. As your child gets older, help them identify their difficulties and communicate them to teachers.
• Let teachers and the school team know that your child’s mental health needs—including sleep—take priority over finishing homework. If your child is always struggling to complete homework and get enough sleep, or if completing homework is leading to emotional meltdowns every night, adjusting their homework demands will be more successful than continuing to push them into sleep deprivation or meltdowns.
• Request a child study team evaluation to determine if your child qualifies for services under special education law such as an IEP, or accommodations through section 504—and be sure that homework adjustments are included in any plan. Or if such a plan is already in place, be clear that modification of homework expectations needs to be part of it.

The Long-Term Story

I still work with Chelsea and she recently mentioned how those conversations so many years ago are still part of how she approaches work tasks or other demands that are spiking her anxiety when she finds herself in a vortex of distress. She stops what she is doing and prioritizes reducing her anxiety—whether it’s a break during her day or an ending to the task for the evening. She sees that this is crucial to managing her anxiety in her life and still succeeding at what she is doing.

Task completion at all costs is not a solution for kids with emotional needs. Her story (and the story of many of my patients) make this crystal clear.

Candida Fink, M.D. , is board certified in child/adolescent and general psychiatry. She practices in New York and has co-authored two books— The Ups and Downs of Raising a Bipolar Child and Bipolar Disorder for Dummies.

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How does homework affect students.

Posted by Kenny Gill

Homework is essential in the learning process of all students. It benefits them in managing time, being organized, and thinking beyond the classroom work. When students develop good habits towards homework, they enjoy good grades. The amount of homework given to students has risen by 51 percent. In most cases, this pushes them to order for custom essays online. A lot of homework can be overwhelming, affecting students in negative ways.

How homework affects the psyche of students Homework plays a crucial role in ensuring students succeeds both inside and outside the classroom. The numerous hours they spend in class, on school work, and away from family and friends lead to them experiencing exhaustion. Too much homework leads to students becoming disheartened by the school, and it chips away at their motivation for succeeding.

As a result, homework becomes an uphill battle, which they feel they will never win despite putting an effort. When they continue to find homework difficult, they consider other ways of working on it, such as cheating.

Getting enough time to relax, engage with friends and family members helps the students to have fun, thus, raising their spirit and their psyche on school work.  However, when homework exceeds, it affects their emotional well-being making them sad and unproductive students who would rather cheat their way through school.

As a result, they have to struggle with a lack of enough sleep, loss of weight, stomach problems, headaches, and fatigue. Poor eating habits where students rely on fast foods also occasions as they struggle to complete all their assignments. When combined with lack of physical activity, the students suffer from obesity and other health-related conditions. Also, they experience depression and anxiety. The pressure to attend all classes, finish the much homework, as well as have time to make social connections cripples them.

How can parents help with homework? Being an active parent in the life of your child goes a long way towards promoting the health and well-being of children. Participating in their process of doing homework helps you identify if your child is facing challenges, and provide the much-needed support.

The first step is identifying the problem your child has by establishing whether their homework is too much. In elementary school, students should not spend over twenty minutes on homework while in high school they should spend an average of two hours. If it exceeds these guidelines, then you know that the homework is too much and you need to talk with the teachers.

The other step is ensuring your child focuses on their work by eliminating distractions. Texting with friends, watching videos, and playing video games can distract your child. Next, help them create a homework routine by having a designated area for studying and organizing their time for each activity.

Why it is better to do homework with friends Extracurricular activities such as sports and volunteer work that students engage in are vital. The events allow them to refresh their minds, catch up, and share with friends, and sharpen their communication skills. Homework is better done with friends as it helps them get these benefits. Through working together, interacting, and sharing with friends, their stress reduces.

Working on assignments with friends relaxes the students. It ensures they have the help they need when tackling the work, making even too much homework bearable. Also, it develops their communication skills. Deterioration of communication skills is a prominent reason as to why homework is bad. Too much of it keeps one away from classmates and friends, making it difficult for one to communicate with other people.

Working on homework with friends, however, ensures one learns how to express themselves and solve issues, making one an excellent communicator.

How does a lot of homework affect students’ performance? Burnout is a negative effect of homework. After spending the entire day learning, having to spend more hours doing too much homework lead to burnout. When it occurs, students begin dragging their feet when it comes to working on assignments and in some cases, fail to complete them. Therefore, they end up getting poor grades, which affects their overall performance.

Excessive homework also overshadows active learning, which is essential in the learning process. It encourages active participation of students in analyzing and applying what they learn in class in the real world. As a result, this limits the involvement of parents in the process of learning and children collaboration with friends. Instead, it causes boredom, difficulties for the students to work alongside others, and lack of skills in solving problems.

Should students have homework? Well, this is the question many parents and students ask when they consider these adverse effects of homework. Homework is vital in the learning process of any student. However, in most cases, it has crossed the line from being a tool for learning and becomes a source of suffering for students. With such effects, a balance is necessary to help students learn, remain healthy, and be all rounded individuals in society.

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One Response to How does homework affect students?

Great info and really valuable for teachers and tutors. This is a really very wonderful post. I really appreciate it; this post is very helpful for education.

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Excessive homework, inadequate sleep, physical inactivity and screen viewing time are major contributors to high paediatric obesity

1 School of Sport Sciences, Beijing Sport University, Beijing, China

Zhixiong Zhou

2 School of Physical Education and Coaching Science, Capital University of Physical Education and Sports, Beijing, China

Wenxi (Kevin) Liu

3 Department of Kinesiology, Health, and Nutrition, University of Texas at San Antonio, San Antonio, TX, USA

Xiujiang Wang

4 Children's Center of China, Beijing, China

Associated Data

Table S2 . Means (M), standard deviations ( SD ) of afterschool EBRB s by grade level.

This study examined the relationships between energy balance‐related behaviours (EBRBs) outside school hours and obesity in Chinese primary school students. We also explored the influence of gender on those relationships.

The study sample was a cross‐sectional cohort of 5032 Chinese children who were enrolled in grades 1–6 in primary schools in five Chinese cities and whose mean ages ranged from seven years and three months to 11.9 years. The children's parents completed a survey on their child's height, weight and EBRBs outside school hours.

The response rate was 97%, and the reported rates of overweight and obesity were 13.6% and 13.8%, respectively. The obesity rates were higher in boys and lower grade children. Most EBRBs varied between boys and girls and with increased grade levels. The amount of time spent on academic‐related activities, screen viewing, outdoor activities and sleep was mostly associated with obesity on weekdays and varied by gender.

Rate of obesity was alarmingly high in the primary school Chinese children in this cohort, especially in younger children. Excessive time spent on academic‐related activities outside school hours, inadequate sleep, physical inactivity and higher levels of screen viewing were major contributors to obesity in these Chinese children.

Abbreviations

• This study examined the relationships between energy balance‐related behaviours outside school hours and obesity in Chinese primary school students.
• Rates of obesity were alarmingly high in the children in this cohort, especially in younger children, with some notable age and gender differences.
• Excessive time spent on academic‐related activities outside school hours, inadequate sleep, physical inactivity and higher levels of screen viewing were major contributors to obesity levels.

Introduction

Childhood obesity has been rising rapidly in China, following the trends in developed countries 1 , and the increase is more dramatic in large urban regions 1 , 2 . According to the Chinese National Surveys on Students Constitution and Health, the prevalence of obesity in children aged 7–19 increased from 0.2% in 1985 to 8.1% in 2010. The Survey reported that obesity levels were highest among children aged seven to nine years, at 15.7% for boys and 8% for girls, and lowest in the 16–18 age group, at 6.8% for boys and 2.25% for girls 2 . While this increase has far exceeded those found in American and European children, the gender differences and high prevalence among the youngest children are particularly alarming and indicate a secular trend that could have serious health and economic implications for China in the near future 2 .

Energy balance‐related behaviours (EBRBs) refer to behaviours that influence energy intake and expenditure 3 , and the essence of obesity is dysregulation of EBRBs, leading to a positive energy balance. The links between obesity and EBRBs have been observed in preschool and primary school children 4 . Because activities at school are highly regulated and focused on academic pursuits, the study of EBRBs outside school hours – before and after school and during weekends and school holidays – provides additional insights for combating childhood obesity. Participation in outdoor activities, especially moderate‐to‐vigorous physical activity (MVPA) has been positively associated with lower body mass index (BMI), while increases in sedentary activities, such as sitting for lengthy periods of time, watching TV and playing computer games, have been associated with higher BMIs in children 4 , 5 . Epidemiological studies have also showed a close association between sleep deficiency and increases in childhood obesity 5 . However, it is not clear whether time spent on homework and other academic remedial activities outside school hours is associated with obesity in children.

From a young age, Chinese children are exposed to a fiery competitive system to prepare them for admission to universities 6 . Children start school in China at the age of 6 or 7, and primary school students are expected to spend at least three hours a day on academic‐related work, which includes homework assignments from their teachers and additional academic remedial and enrichment activities offered by external providers. This is in addition to a long school day that lasts eight to nine hours. These extra activities are paid tutoring programmes that enhance the children's academic achievement and aptitude. Little is known about the health effects of dedicating such a large amount of time to academic‐related studies on obesity in children of this age group 3 . An emerging body of research has related obesity with physical activity, sedentary behaviour and diet in Chinese children, similar to those conducted in developed countries 7 , 8 . However, a few studies have examined the effects of EBRBs outside school hours on obesity by age and gender in Chinese children.

This study reports the findings of a multicity parent survey on children's engagement in a broad range of EBRBs outside school hours in Chinese primary school students. The aims of this study were to examine the rate of obesity, the levels and patterns of EBRBs outside school hours and the relationships between engaging in EBRBs and obesity in a large sample of Chinese primary school students. Understanding children's activities outside school hours can facilitate a balanced development that promotes children's health and well‐being.

Study sample and data collection procedure

The study was conducted from March 1 to March 15, 2012 and included primary school students in five large metropolitan cities in five geographical regions of China: Beijing in Northern China, Guangzhou in Southern China, Hefei in Central China, Shanghai in Eastern Costal China and Xi'an in Western China. Four to five schools were selected from various areas of the city that were representative of the schools in the city. In each school, one classroom was randomly chosen from each of the six class grade levels to participate in the study. The parents of 5517 students were invited to complete a survey, and 5339 surveys were returned, providing a 97% response rate. Students who participated in sport teams or clubs were not asked not to complete the survey. The parents were informed that they could opt out of the study without any repercussions, and no financial incentive was provided for participating in the survey. The response rates were similar for all class grade levels and cities. After excluding the surveys with incomplete data on gender, age, grade, height and weight, 5032 students – 91% of the initial sample – were included in the data analysis. The study protocol was approved by the Research Review Committee of Beijing Sport University.

Parents were asked to complete a survey on their children's participation in five categories of leisure and nonleisure activities outside school hours on weekdays and at weekends, including three of the most common outdoor activities in children 9 . Parents talked to their children and estimated the number of hours that they spent on outdoor activities, homework assignments screen viewing – covering television and playing games on computers – remedial academic work to supplement and enrich their academic activities and sleep outside school hours on weekdays and at weekends. The students were not permitted to complete the surveys by themselves regardless of their ages. Parents were asked to report their child's current height and weight based on results from their most recent clinic visit or latest physical examination. Information was also requested on the students’ age, gender, grade levels, average school grades – with A being the best grade and F the lowest – for all subject areas (excluding physical education) and physical education. They were also asked about their own education levels and the monthly family income in renminbi, which is the Chinese currency. The students brought the completed surveys back to school the following day. The surveys were screened for completeness and entered into a database for quality checking by six research staff. These staff re‐entered 10% of the surveys to check for accuracy and the error rate was <0.0002%. Information on the children's attitudes towards outdoor activities, hygiene practices such as hand washing during outdoor activities and parent and peer support were also collected, but not included in this study.

Data analysis

The children's BMI, BMI Z‐score and standard deviations of BMI for age were calculated with the free AnthroPlus software from the World Health Organization (WHO) and using WHO Child Growth Standards 10 . The classification of obesity was based on the reference developed by the Working Group on Obesity in China (WGOC) 11 . We also classified obesity using the WHO age‐specific and sex‐specific BMI cut‐off points that were based on the WHO Child Growth Standards 12 . We used the BMI Z‐score as the continuous measure of obesity in this study, but performed the analyses on BMI as well. Associations between categorical variables were analysed with chi‐square ( χ 2 ) statistics, and associations between categorical and ordinal variables were analysed with Somer's d. Spearman's correlation was used to examine the relation between ordinal and continuous variables. The one‐way F‐test was used to test group differences or trends on continuous variables. Generalised estimation equations were used to estimate the independent associations between the BMI Z‐score as the response variable and EBRBs outside school hours as the explanatory variables. The city where the school data collection sites were based was included as a random term to control the clustering effect. The children's age, gender, grade levels, average school grades, average physical education grade, father's and mother's education levels and monthly family income were included as covariates. The analysis was repeated with stratification by gender to examine gender‐specific relationships between obesity and EBRBs outside school hours. To produce a parsimonious model, only significant covariates were kept in the final model. SPSS Statistics version 22 (IBM Corp., New York, NY, USA) was used in data analysis, with significance set at p = 0.05 based on a two‐sided test.

The study comprised 5032 students from six years and one month to 14.1 years, with a mean age of 9.70 and standard deviation of 1.72. Grades 1–6 normally cover students up to the age of 12, but sometimes they contain a few older students who are behind with their education for some reason. Table  1 shows the student characteristics and associations with obesity status. In general, the students in the study came from educated families, as 50.1% of the fathers and 46.2% of the mothers had attended college or higher education. More than two‐thirds of the families had a monthly income of <10 000 RMB, which was comparable to the 2012 national average family income of 13 000 RMB or 2100 US dollars per month. Students had a wide range of school grades in academic subject areas and physical education. Similar proportions of students from the five cities and across school grade levels were presented in the study sample (data not shown). Finally, higher levels of parent education and family income were associated with higher levels of obesity.

Student characteristics (n = 5032) and unadjusted correlations a with obesity status

A = The best grade; Grade F = Poorest grade; RMB = Renminbi (Chinese currency).

*p > 0.05, **p > 0.001, two‐sided test.

Table  2 shows the rate of overweight and obesity based on the Chinese WGOC reference in the overall student sample and by the cities included in the data collection. Boys were more likely to be overweight ( χ 2  = 115.48, df = 1, p < 0.001) and obese ( χ 2  = 80.43, df = 1, p < 0.001) than girls, and the patterns were similar across all five cities. The highest prevalence was observed in Beijing and Shanghai, two of the largest and most developed cities in China. Obesity rates based on the WHO Child Growth Standards are also presented. The rate for overweight was higher in the WHO reference than the WGOC reference, but the levels were similar for obesity. There was a significant inverse relationship for the total sample and by gender between the level of obesity and the students’ class grade level in school (p < 0.001 for trend) (Table  3 ). The inverse trend with age was particularly striking, with a difference of more than 10 percentage points between students in the first grade (19.6%) and the sixth grade (6.8%).

Rates of overweight and obesity in the overall student sample and broken down by gender

WGOC = Working Group on Obesity in China; WHO = World Health Organization child growth charts.

Unadjusted correlations between school grade level and obesity status a

Chinese primary students dedicated more time to academic‐related work outside school hours, namely homework and remedial academic work, and this reached almost three hours on weekdays and more than four hours on weekend days (Table S1). The time they spent on screen viewing and outdoor activities was rather limited on weekdays, at approximately one hour per day. On weekdays, boys spent more time on homework, screen viewing and sleep than girls. Girls spent more time on remedial academic work on both weekdays and weekend days than boys. Boys also spent more time on outdoor play on weekend days. Finally, children in higher grades spent more time on academic‐related activities and less time on nonacademic‐related activities and sleep, especially on weekdays (Table S2). Overall, there was a limited amount of discretionary time, approximately two to three hours per day, left for children to engage in other essential daily routine activities, such as travelling to and from school, eating meals, going to the toilet and washing (data not shown). A higher class grade level was significantly correlated with more time spent on homework and remedial academic work on weekdays and weekend days. Higher grades were also significantly correlated with less time spent on screen viewing and outdoor activities on weekend days and less sleep on weekdays.

In general, weekday afterschool EBRBs were associated more closely with obesity status as shown in Table  4 . Weekday homework, screen viewing and outdoor activities were positively associated with obesity status, while weekend day remedial academic work and weekday sleep were inversely associated (p < 0.05). Finally, obesity status was positively correlated with time spent on homework on weekdays, screen viewing on weekdays and weekend days and outdoor activities on weekdays. It was also inversely correlated with time spent on remedial academic work on weekend days and sleep on weekdays.

Means, standard deviations (SD) of out of school EBRB s and their correlations a with obesity status

EBRB = Energy balance‐related behaviour.

After controlling for significant covariates, the BMI Z‐score in the model that combined all the students was significantly and positively associated with hours of homework and screen viewing, inversely associated with hours of sleeping on weekdays and marginally and negatively associated with hours of outdoor activities on weekend days (Table  5 ). In the boys’ model, the BMI Z‐score was significantly and positively associated with hours spent on homework and negatively associated with hours of sleep on weekdays and was not related to EBRBs on weekend days. In the girls’ model, the BMI Z‐score was significantly and positively associated with hours of screen viewing on weekdays and was significantly and negatively associated with hours of outdoor activities on weekend days. The results were similar when we performed the analysis with BMI as the outcome variable (result not shown).

Results from generalised estimation equations analysis on the relationships between the children's body mass index Z‐score and energy balanced‐related behaviours outside school

B = Regression coefficient; SE = Standard error; p = Level of significance; ns = Not significant.

*Weekday model and † weekend day model both adjusted for intercept, gender and grade level.

‡ Weekday model and § weekend day model both adjusted for intercept, grade level and physical education grade.

¶ Weekday model and **weekend day model both adjusted for intercept, grade level and father's education level.

Findings from this survey study revealed that levels of overweight (13.7%) and obesity (13.6%) in primary school students living in large metropolitan cities were alarmingly high, continuing a secular trend that has emerged since the 2000s in Chinese children 2 , 13 . It is particularly worrying to see the gender disparity in obesity that emerged in this study, with the rate in boys nearly doubling and disproportional obesity at lower grade levels. Higher levels of parental education and family income were associated with higher levels of obesity in this sample of urban Chinese children, and this was consistent with studies conducted in the United States and other Western countries. The associations disappeared in the multivariate analysis, except for in the models for just girls, where the father's education remained a significant covariate. However, class grades and gender remained as significant covariates, suggesting the important role they play in understanding the obesity epidemic in Chinese students. Finally, there was evidence that time spent on academic‐related activities, screen viewing, outdoor activities and sleep was closely associated with obesity and that this varied by gender between weekdays and weekend days.

The rate of obesity in our study sample was consistent with recent studies based on the Chinese WGOC reference that used height and weight measured directly by trained research staff 2 , 13 . The prevalence of childhood obesity in China has doubled over the past 10 years according to a report published by the National Health and Family Planning Commission of the People's Republic of China in 2014 14 . It is not a surprise that the prevalence of childhood obesity has approached those observed in the United States and other developed countries in less than two decades, in the light of the alarming temporal increase in rate of obesity since the 1980s 8 , 13 . For instance, Ma et al. reported that the obesity rates were 0.10%, 0.30%, 0.23% and 0.23% in 1985–1995, 1995–2000, 2000–2005 and 2005–2010, respectively, using data from the Chinese National Survey on Students Constitution and Health 15 .

While some studies, including our study, have showed that time for academic‐related activity and screen viewing increased with age, while sleep duration decreased with age 8 , 16 , other studies have reported that older children and adolescents were more physically active and spent less on screen viewing 7 . A study of 2163 Chinese children aged nine years to 17 years from 11 cities measured daily physical activity and sedentary behaviour using accelerometry 17 . As the children got older, they had higher levels of moderate and vigorous physical activity (MVPA) and sedentary behaviour. However, levels of MVPA and sedentary behaviour were not correlated with children's obesity status in the study sample. The same was also observed in a sample of Australian girls 18 . These findings suggest that other EBRBs influenced the energy balance and obesity in children as well.

Concern has been raised about the faster increase in obesity in lower‐level primary school students (grades 1–3) than upper‐level students (grades 4–6) that have been found in studies of Chinese children 8 , 19 , and these were also found in our study. A similar trend has also been reported in other developing countries in recent years 20 . Although there is no clear explanation for this secular trend of obesity, Yang and Huffman speculated that the introduction of formula feeding, increased consumption of foods with high protein levels and added sugar, reduced access to physical activities and poor maternal prenatal diets might have contributed to the higher prevalence of obesity among younger children in developing countries 21 .

However, it is still unclear why the prevalence of obesity in boys in our study was nearly twice as high as the girls who took part. This gender disparity has also been reported by others studies of Chinese children 8 , 19 . As nutritious foods are in plentiful supply and food insecurity is not an issue in Chinese urban cities 1 , 13 , one plausible explanation is that boys consumed a more energy‐dense diet than girls and that led to a positive energy balance. However, food consumption or eating unhealthy foods has not been associated with a particular gender and cannot explain the differences in obesity in Chinese children reported in the current literature 7 . This means that we are left with the other parameter in the energy balance equation, namely the energy expenditure. Although we could not quantify which gender was more sedentary based on the reported EBRBs, there were clear differences in EBRBs between boys and girls that suggested that boys were more sedentary on weekdays. Furthermore, the stratified analyses showed differential associations of EBRBs with obesity: the boys’ obesity was influenced by more time spent on homework and less sleep on weekdays while the girls’ obesity was associated with more screen viewing on weekdays and less outdoor activity on weekend days. While the increased sedentary time and decreased sleep in boys can be explained by a displacement effect due to increase time spent on academic‐related work on weekdays, girls have been reported to prefer sedentary activities 17 , 22 .

Higher pressure for academic excellence from society, schools and parents has been linked to increased time spent on homework and lack of sleep and may contribute to the limited time spent on screen viewing by Chinese students, as suggested by cross‐cultural studies 8 . Chinese students spend more time on homework and other academic‐related work outside school hours and less time on screen viewing and sleep, compared to students of the same age from Western countries. However, less is known about the differences in physical activity and diet between Chinese and Western students. Although academic pressure has been related to childhood obesity in some developing countries 23 , it has not become the focus of studies in China. Our findings showed that academic‐related activities outside school hours displaced time for physical activity and sleep in primary school students 24 . This should serve as a warning to parents, schools, policy makers and ultimately the Chinese education system to re‐examine and modify the current practices and expectations of children in primary schools 7 . It should be noted that the amount of time spent on homework, screen viewing and sleep based on the parental reports in this study was similar to those reported in large national surveys in China 8 , 22 .

Childhood obesity prevention in China has generally focused on promoting physical activity and healthy eating 25 . Recently studies have identified that sedentary behaviours, such as watching TV and playing on computers, high level of life stress and lack of sleep were independently associated with obesity in Western children 5 , 26 . Findings from our study suggest that sedentary behaviour from an excessive amount of time spent on academic‐related work and inadequate sleep, in addition to a lack of physical activity and excessive screen viewing, may be responsible for increased obesity in Chinese children 7 . An examination of childhood obesity intervention studies in China revealed that focusing interventions on physical activity and unhealthy diets, commonly regarded as two primary contributors to the current obesity epidemic, produced marginally effective outcomes, suggesting additional factors may also play roles 25 . Therefore, all EBRBs need to be considered in order to prevent childhood obesity and interventions should specifically target the relevant EBRBs to be effective for different genders and age groups.

We found a positive association between obesity status and outdoor activity time on weekdays, but not on weekend days, in the study sample. Because of the ongoing school‐based national Sunshine Activity campaign, which has encouraged Chinese children to play outside in the sunshine since 2007, we assessed the time spent on outdoor activities rather than on MVPA in this study. However, it is not appropriate to equate the outdoor activities reported in this study with MVPA. The three most commonly reported outdoor activities in this study were as follows: (i) exercises and sport activities involving moderate and vigorous intensity, such as jumping with ropes, soccer, swimming, jogging and exercise stations; (ii) games and play activities involving light and moderate intensity, such as hide‐and‐seek and playing in the park; and (iii) outdoor leisure activities involving light intensity, such as leisurely strolls with friends and walking the dog. High‐intensity exercises and sports activities were less common in our cohort. When we examined these three reported activities in the study sample, we found that overweight and obese students engaged more frequently in light‐ and moderate‐intensity activities and less frequently in higher‐intensity exercises and sport activities than normal weight students on weekdays (data not shown). Therefore, the positive correlation between obesity and outdoor activities on weekdays could be due to the measurement method used. However, this cannot be directly examined in this study.

There were several limitations to the study. First, because this study used a cross‐sectional design, the findings relating to relationships between responses and explanatory variables should not be interpreted as causal. Future studies should examine the findings further using longitudinal study designs. Second, all of the data, including height and weight, were self‐reported and subject to bias in self‐reports and inaccurate recalls. Although parental reports of children's health information is regularly used in population‐based health studies, the use of such data tends to overestimate weight and that lead to overestimation of obesity rates in children 27 . Therefore, study findings based on parent‐reported height and weight should be interpreted with caution. Similarly, parental reports of the time that their children spend on various activities outside school hours on weekdays and weekend days are also subject to recall errors. Nonetheless, the obesity rates and how the school‐aged children in this study used their time were similar to studies based on directly measured height and weight or observational studies from the same period. Third, because the study data were not collected from a nationally representative sample and did not include children from small cities or rural regions, the findings should not be overgeneralised. Fourth, the use of the Chinese WGOC cut‐off reference for obesity tends to overestimate obesity for boys aged 6–16 and underestimate obesity for girls aged 3–18 and that may have exacerbated the gender disparity 28 . Finally, the study only focused on EBRBs outside school hours and did not collect data on diet and physical activity at school. Future studies need to examine EBRBs that occur both inside and outside school, including diet, to establish a full picture of the relationships between obesity and EBRBs in children.

The rate of obesity was high in Chinese primary school children, especially among boys and children in lower grades, and there were differential associations between obesity status and EBRBs in Chinese boys and girls outside school hours. Accordingly, obesity prevention programmes that only focus on physical activity, screen viewing and diet may not produce expected outcomes without addressing excessive time spent on academic‐related activity and inadequate sleep in Chinese children 25 . The design of interventions should also take into account the differences between EBRBs on weekdays and weekend days 17 . Finally, there is a need to conduct cross‐cultural studies of obesity and EBRBs that can help us to understand the underlying causes of the gender differences and the increased rates of obesity in younger children. These will enable us to develop culturally relevant lifestyle interventions for different population groups in China.

This study was partly funded by the Children's Center of China. The funder had no role in any part of the study.

Conflict of interest

The authors have no conflict of interests to disclose.

Supporting information

Table S1. Means, standard deviations ( SD ) of non‐school EBRB s for all students and comparison by gender.

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the Children's Centers in Shanghai, Anhui Provence, Shanxi Provence and Guangdong Provence for their help in the collection, entry and quality checking of the study data and the students, parents and school teachers whose participation and cooperation made this study possible.

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More than two hours of homework may be counterproductive, research suggests.

A Stanford education researcher found that too much homework can negatively affect kids, especially their lives away from school, where family, friends and activities matter.   "Our findings on the effects of homework challenge the traditional assumption that homework is inherently good," wrote Denise Pope , a senior lecturer at the Stanford Graduate School of Education and a co-author of a study published in the Journal of Experimental Education .   The researchers used survey data to examine perceptions about homework, student well-being and behavioral engagement in a sample of 4,317 students from 10 high-performing high schools in upper-middle-class California communities. Along with the survey data, Pope and her colleagues used open-ended answers to explore the students' views on homework.   Median household income exceeded $90,000 in these communities, and 93 percent of the students went on to college, either two-year or four-year.   Students in these schools average about 3.1 hours of homework each night.   "The findings address how current homework practices in privileged, high-performing schools sustain students' advantage in competitive climates yet hinder learning, full engagement and well-being," Pope wrote.   Pope and her colleagues found that too much homework can diminish its effectiveness and even be counterproductive. They cite prior research indicating that homework benefits plateau at about two hours per night, and that 90 minutes to two and a half hours is optimal for high school.   Their study found that too much homework is associated with:   • Greater stress : 56 percent of the students considered homework a primary source of stress, according to the survey data. Forty-three percent viewed tests as a primary stressor, while 33 percent put the pressure to get good grades in that category. Less than 1 percent of the students said homework was not a stressor.   • Reductions in health : In their open-ended answers, many students said their homework load led to sleep deprivation and other health problems. The researchers asked students whether they experienced health issues such as headaches, exhaustion, sleep deprivation, weight loss and stomach problems.   • Less time for friends, family and extracurricular pursuits : Both the survey data and student responses indicate that spending too much time on homework meant that students were "not meeting their developmental needs or cultivating other critical life skills," according to the researchers. Students were more likely to drop activities, not see friends or family, and not pursue hobbies they enjoy.   A balancing act   The results offer empirical evidence that many students struggle to find balance between homework, extracurricular activities and social time, the researchers said. Many students felt forced or obligated to choose homework over developing other talents or skills.   Also, there was no relationship between the time spent on homework and how much the student enjoyed it. The research quoted students as saying they often do homework they see as "pointless" or "mindless" in order to keep their grades up.   "This kind of busy work, by its very nature, discourages learning and instead promotes doing homework simply to get points," said Pope, who is also a co-founder of Challenge Success , a nonprofit organization affiliated with the GSE that conducts research and works with schools and parents to improve students' educational experiences..   Pope said the research calls into question the value of assigning large amounts of homework in high-performing schools. Homework should not be simply assigned as a routine practice, she said.   "Rather, any homework assigned should have a purpose and benefit, and it should be designed to cultivate learning and development," wrote Pope.   High-performing paradox   In places where students attend high-performing schools, too much homework can reduce their time to foster skills in the area of personal responsibility, the researchers concluded. "Young people are spending more time alone," they wrote, "which means less time for family and fewer opportunities to engage in their communities."   Student perspectives   The researchers say that while their open-ended or "self-reporting" methodology to gauge student concerns about homework may have limitations – some might regard it as an opportunity for "typical adolescent complaining" – it was important to learn firsthand what the students believe.   The paper was co-authored by Mollie Galloway from Lewis and Clark College and Jerusha Conner from Villanova University.

Clifton B. Parker is a writer at the Stanford News Service .

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How Homework Is Destroying Teens’ Health

Jessica Amabile '24 , Staff Writer March 25, 2022

“[Students] average about 3.1 hours of homework each night,” according to an article published by Stanford .  Teens across the country come home from school, exhausted from a long day, only to do more schoolwork.  They sit at their computers, working on homework assignments for hours on end.  To say the relentless amount of work they have to do is overwhelming would be an understatement.  The sheer amount of homework given has many negative impacts on teenagers.

Students have had homework for decades, but in more recent years it has become increasingly more demanding.  Multiple studies have shown that students average about three hours of homework per night.  The Atlantic mentioned that students now have twice as much homework as students did in the 1990s.  This is extremely detrimental to teens’ mental health and levels of stress.  Students have a lot to do after school, such as spending time with family, extracurricular activities, taking care of siblings or other family members, hanging out with friends, or all of the above.  Having to juggle all of this as well as hours on end of homework is unreasonable because teenagers already have enough to think or worry about.   

According to a student- run survey conducted in Cherry Hill West, students reported that they received the most homework in math, history, and language arts classes.  They receive anywhere from 1 to 4 or more hours of homework every day, but only about 22.7% somewhat or strongly agree that it helps them learn.  Of the students who participated, 63.6% think schools should continue to give out homework sometimes, while 27.3% said they should not give out homework at all.  In an open-ended response section, students had a lot to say.  One student wrote, “I think we should get homework to practice work if we are seen struggling, or didn’t finish work in class. But if we get homework, I think it just shows that the teacher needs more time to teach and instead of speeding up, gives us more work.”  Another added,  “Homework is important to learn the material. However, too much may lead to the student not learning that much, or it may become stressful to do homework everyday.”  Others wrote, “The work I get in chemistry doesn’t help me learn at all if anything it confuses me more,” and “I think math is the only class I could use homework as that helps me learn while world language is supposed to help me learn but feels more like a time waste.”   A student admitted, “I think homework is beneficial for students but the amount of homework teachers give us each day is very overwhelming and puts a lot of stress on kids. I always have my work done but all of the homework I have really changes my emotions and it effects me.”  Another pointed out, “you are at school for most of your day waking up before the sun and still after all of that they send you home each day with work you need to do before the next day. Does that really make sense[?]”

As an article from Healthline mentioned, “Researchers asked students whether they experienced physical symptoms of stress… More than 80 percent of students reported having at least one stress-related symptom in the past month, and 44 percent said they had experienced three or more symptoms.”  If school is causing students physical symptoms of stress, it needs to re-evaluate whether or not homework is beneficial to students, especially teenagers.  Students aren’t learning anything if they have hours of “busy work” every night, so much so that it gives them symptoms of stress, such as headaches, weight loss, sleep deprivation, and so on.  The continuous hours of work are doing nothing but harming students mentally and physically.

The mental effects of homework can be harmful as well.  Mental health issues are often ignored, even when schools can be the root of the problem.  An article from USA Today contained a quote from a licensed therapist and social worker named Cynthia Catchings, which reads, “ heavy workloads can also cause serious mental health problems in the long run, like anxiety and depression.”  Mental health problems are not beneficial in any way to education.  In fact, it makes it more difficult for students to focus and learn.  

Some studies have suggested that students should receive less homework.  To an extent, homework can help students in certain areas, such as math.  However, too much has detrimental impacts on their mental and physical health.  Emmy Kang, a mental health counselor, has a suggestion.  She mentioned, “I don’t think (we) should scrap homework; I think we should scrap meaningless, purposeless busy work-type homework. That’s something that needs to be scrapped entirely,” she says, encouraging teachers to be thoughtful and consider the amount of time it would take for students to complete assignments,” according to USA Today .  Students don’t have much control over the homework they receive, but if enough people could explain to teachers the negative impacts it has on them, they might be convinced.  Teachers need to realize that their students have other classes and other assignments to do.  While this may not work for everything, it would at least be a start, which would be beneficial to students.

The sole purpose of schools is to educate children and young adults to help them later on in life.  However, school curriculums have gone too far if hours of homework for each class are seen as necessary and beneficial to learning.  Many studies have shown that homework has harmful effects on students, so how does it make sense to keep assigning it?  At this rate, the amount of time spent on homework will increase in years to come, along with the effects of poor mental and physical health.  Currently, students do an average of 3 hours of homework, according to the Washington Post, and the estimated amount of teenagers suffering from at least one mental illness is 1 in 5, as Polaris Teen Center stated.  This is already bad enough–it’s worrisome to think it could get much worse.  Homework is not more important than physical or mental health, by any standards.

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Working from home has negatively impacted physical health and mental health, study finds

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What impact has working from home as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic had on our health? In a new study, researchers from USC have found that working from home has negatively impacted our physical health and mental health, increased work expectations and distractions, reduced our communications with co-workers and ultimately lessened our productivity.

The study finds that time spent at the workstation increased by approximately 1.5 hours, while most workers are likely to have less job satisfaction and increased neck pain when working from home. It also illustrates the differential impact of working from home for women, parents, and those with higher income.

Nearly 1,000 respondents participated in the survey regarding the impact of working from home on physical and mental well-being. Authored by Ph.D student Yijing Xiao, Burcin Becerik-Gerber, Dean's Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Gale Lucas, a research Assistant Professor at the USC Institute for Creative Technologies and Shawn Roll, Associate Professor of Occupational Science and Occupational Therapy, the study was published in the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine . Becerik-Gerber and Lucas are co-directors of The Center for Intelligent Environments at USC.

The survey was conducted during the early days of the pandemic. Responses regarding lifestyles, home office environments, and physical and mental well-being revealed the following about that first phase of the pandemic's "work from home" period:

• Over 64 percent of respondents claimed to have one or more new physical health issues
• Nearly 75 percent of those surveyed experienced one new mental health issue
• Female workers with annual salary less than 100k were more likely than male workers or workers with higher income to report two or more new physical and mental health issues
• Female workers had higher incidence of depression
• Parents with infants tended to have better mental well-being but also a higher chance of reporting a new mental health issue
• Having toddlers was affiliated with physical well-being but was also associated with more physical and mental health issues
• Living with at least one teenager lowered the risk of new health issues
• Nearly 3/4 of workers adjusted their work hours and more than 1/3 reported scheduling their work hours around others
• Workers who adjusted their work hours or schedule work around others were more likely to report new physical or mental health issues
• Pets did not appear to have impact on physical or mental health
• Workers decreased overall physical activity and physical exercise, combined with increased overall food intake
• Decreased physical and mental well-being was correlated with increased food or junk food intake
• Only one-third had a dedicated room for their work at home; at least 47. 6 percent shared their workspace with others

The authors suggest that having a dedicated work from home space would mitigate a number of negative impacts.

The quality of your home workspace is important; having a dedicated workspace signals to others that you are busy, and minimizes the chances of being distracted and interrupted. Increased satisfaction with the environmental quality factors in your workspace, such as lighting, temperature, is associated with a lower chance of having new health issues. In addition, knowing how to adjust your workspace helps with physical health." Burcin Becerik-Gerber, study's corresponding author

University of Southern California

Posted in: Medical Research News | Healthcare News

Tags: covid-19 , Depression , Exercise , Food , Junk Food , Medicine , Mental Health , Neck , Neck Pain , Occupational Therapy , Pain , Pandemic , pH , Physical Activity , Research

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3 Surprising Health Risks of Working From Home

 Alex Dos Diaz / Verywell

Key Takeaways

• More people are working from home amid the COVID-19 pandemic. While avoiding the office and staying socially distant is crucial to stopping the spread of the virus, working from home can bring about other health concerns.
• A recent study found that 41.2% of at-home workers report low back pain and 23.5% experience neck pain.
• Experts say that many of these health issues can be prevented or alleviated by taking simple measures to improve your work-from-home environment.

Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic , more people around the world are working remotely. While the measure has been critical to helping control the spread of the virus, it hasn't come without compromise. As the number of people working from home has increased, healthcare providers have seen a rise in work-related injuries that are unique to the home environment.

That said, experts are hoping to reassure the remote workforce that many of these problems can be prevented or alleviated by taking simple steps to improve your at-home workspace.

Early Research

A small study conducted by researchers in Itlay has provided early insight into the potential impact that the increase in working from home amid the COVID-19 could have.  

The study, published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, surveyed 51 at-home workers in Italy. The results showed that 41.2% of at-home workers reported low back pain, while 23.5% reported neck pain. About half of the respondents said that their neck pain (50%) had gotten worse since they started working from home.

While the study was small and limited in scope, it asks some important questions for employees who are trying to minimize the physical and emotional toll of their new work life. The good news is, there are some practical solutions that most workers can benefit from.

What This Means For You

If you're working from home, there are a few proactive steps you can take to help protect your physical and mental wellbeing. Take frequent breaks (set a reminder alarm if you need to), try to reduce your screen time when you can, get regular exercise, avoid eating at your desk or workspace, and stick to defined working hours.

When you aren't working, look for safe and socially distant ways to connect with others. If you notice any new or worsening health issues, be sure to talk to your provider.

Musculoskeletal Pain

Musculoskeletal pain from a not-quite-right desk set-up, unsupportive chair, or just long hours sitting down is a common problem among workers—both in an office setting and at home.

Meredith Christiansen, DPT, PhD , specializes in ergonomics at Fern Health , where she is a clinical scientist for the at-home musculoskeletal pain care program.

Christiansen recommends placing your computer monitor about arms' length away and keeping your hips and knees at a 90-degree angle. It also helps to avoid sitting on the couch or in bed for prolonged periods.

While proper ergonomic alignment matters, Christiansen tells Verywell that it's even more important to get up and move or change positions every hour of your workday. For example, try alternating between sitting at the dining room table and standing at the kitchen counter (which could serve as a standing desk).

If you're still uncomfortable, don't ignore it. "If you are in pain, it’s important to get it managed right away, so it doesn’t become a more chronic issue," Christiansen says.

After hours at your computer, you've probably felt your vision going a little blurry or even developed a slight headache. Eye strain is a common complaint, but one that is on the rise in remote workers.

Danielle Richardson, OD , optometrist, a consultant for Johnson & Johnson Vision, and the founder of Fierce Clarity (a holistic lifestyle and wellness company), tells Verywell that sustained focus on screens is the main reason people working at home experience increased eye strain.

"There are eye muscles that contract when we look up close, and when we look away they relax," Richardson says. "Everything we are doing is on a screen right now, and so there are fewer visual breaks. Meetings are happening via Zoom, people are sending emails instead of speaking to co-workers, and eating lunch in front of the screen."

Richardson recommends adjusting the angle of your computer screen to be 15 to 20 degrees below the horizontal eye level.

Another contributor to eye straight is the " blue light " emitted from screens, which can disrupt vision. "Blue light focuses in front of the retina, so the eye has to work harder to focus on the screen with that wavelength," Richardson says. "Wearing glasses that filter out the blue light will make digital devices more comfortable.

Richardson recommends following the 20-20-20 Rule: Every 20 minutes, take a screen break and focus on an object that's 20 feet away from you for at least 20 seconds.

Getting up and moving can also help. "I encourage my patients to go for a walk, or have a cup of coffee or tea and look outside," Richardson says.

Glasses and Contact Lenses

If you try making these changes but eye strain and headaches persist, it might be time to make an appointment with an optometrist to see if glasses would help.

"We are prescribing a lot more 'computer glasses,' prescription glasses specifically to relax the muscles while they look at the computer screen," Richardson says. "Even that little bit of extra work can trigger migraines."

If you prefer contact lenses to glasses, she says "daily disposable contact lenses are thinner and more breathable than monthly or two-week lenses. We’ve been switching a lot of patients to make them more comfortable."

If you decide to go the contact lens route, Richardson recommends using a hydrogen peroxide-based contact lens cleaning solution to prevent the build-up of debris.

Richardson also recommends using a lubricant for dry eyes . "Whenever you are doing sustained near work you blink less, so I recommend over the counter artificial tears."

Mental Health

Jagdish Khubchandani, PhD , a professor of public health at New Mexico State University, is currently researching the mental health effects of working from home.

Khubchandani has identified several commonalities among those who work from home and have increased health risks. “American homes were not designed to be offices," Khubchandani tells Verywell. "Indoor environmental parameters are not well examined in the home office setting." Khubchandani's study shows how a poor indoor environment can lead to headaches and pain disorders.  

“More people are working a greater number of hours, and there are no office time boundaries,” he says. “The lack of scheduled work times will take away from leisure time and as is, people are socializing less and there is lesser human contact, which is a big risk for mental health issues.”

In addition to the effects on mental health, isolation and a sedentary lifestyle also contribute to weight gain and obesity. In some cases, a lack of workplace-related health services might allow preexisting health issues to get worse, and preventative care could suffer as well.

On the upside, some participants in Khubchandani's study reported better health since they began working remotely. “Some individuals are now less likely to skip meals, fast, or eat unhealthy due to having more control over their lives, such as saved commute time."

Beyond physical health, the benefits of being at home more can extend to emotional wellbeing and even productivity. “More opportunities to stay with children and family means greater cooking at home as well and improved diet and sleep and social bonding for some,” Khubchandani says. “Studies have shown greater productivity in remote work, another health benefiting impact for some workers.”

Moretti A, Menna F, Aulicino M, Paoletta M, Liguori S, Iolascon G. Characterization of home working population during COVID-19 emergency: A cross-sectional analysis .  Int J Environ Res Public Health . 2020;17(17):6284. doi:10.3390/ijerph17176284

Tietjen GE, Khubchandani J, Ghosh S, Bhattacharjee S, Kleinfelder J. Headache symptoms and indoor environmental parameters: Results from the EPA BASE study .  Ann Indian Acad Neurol . 2012;15(Suppl 1):S95-S99. doi:10.4103/0972-2327.100029

By Cyra-Lea Drummond, BSN, RN Drummond is a registered nurse and a writer specializing in heart health, cardiac care, pediatric health, and more.

The educational process gives many benefits for the youth as it helps children obtain knowledge, improve skills, and get ready for a future career. However, there’s one thing that bothers: Both children and parents are worried about the amount of homework teachers assign kids to study in their free time.

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It’s no secret that most students share the same idea that teachers give them too much homework. And a logical question appears: How many minutes of homework should school students have? Is homework bad ? The short answer is 10 minutes of homework for each grade reacher. Obviously, school, college, and university students can’t get the same amount of homework.

In partnership with the National Parent Teacher Association, The National Education Association has created the 10-minute rule, according to which students shouldn’t be spending more than 10 minutes on doing homework each day for each grade reached. In other words, being a student of the 12th grade, children should spend up to 120 minutes on homework daily which means up to 10 hours a week.

However, statistics on homework claim that children spend around 17.5 hours a week on homework. Simply put, teachers assign too much homework as they lack the knowledge of teaching with SCDL , which may lead to health problems.

Although out-of-class activity is an essential part of the educational process, there are five reasons why too much homework is bad for health.

The Main Source of Stress

There’s a great variety of homework facts and one of them claims that 56% of students consider homework a primary source of stress. Not only does homework help to improve academic achievements, but it also affects students’ grades. Thus, it’s no wonder that students want to complete their homework assignments on a good level. Once students don’t know how to do their task, they start worrying and it leads to stress. The more assignments students get, the higher risks of getting stressed.

Rising Levels of Anxiety

No matter how good as a student you are, you may still have a trouble keeping a work-life balance. Since schools ask students to do too many time-consuming things (attending lectures, reading materials, doing homework), children feel pressed. Unfortunately, more than 41% of college students suffer from anxiety disorders. And the pressure of homework assignments can increase anxiety, according to the facts about homework. If students can’t meet given deadlines, they start panicking and it results in anxiety. Thus, having too much homework isn’t a great idea if keeping students healthy is high on the list.

Chronic Daily Headaches

Whether you’re a parent, teacher, or student, you must know that homework leads to chronic daily headaches. When students get too much homework, they spend a considerable amount of time working on their tasks, so there are two main reasons why homework causes headaches: a student chooses a bad posture while sitting at the desk and he or she is worried about submitting the tasks on time. No matter why headache appears, it goes without saying that it negatively affects physical and mental health, so it also has an influence on the educational process which means students can’t concentrate on the learning materials. All in all, it’s nearly impossible to study well when you suffer from chronic headaches. Thus, it’s important for a parent to control the amount of homework teachers assign.

Lack of Socialization

Getting too much homework prevents kids from spending time with their friends.

At first blush, it seems that homework helps children spend time with their parents, as kids are more likely to ask their parents for help once they have some problems with out-of-class assignments . However, there’s no proof that working together with parents on assignments is beneficial. Firstly, many parents and teachers ask themselves: Should parents help with homework or not? Secondly, it can be daunting for adults to help with homework if they don’t remember the material. Thirdly, students need socialization with their peers.

When students are overwhelmed with the amount of homework, they can’t afford to spend time with their friends which leads to a lack of socialization.

Loss of Creativity

Have you ever heard about the idea that schools are killing creativity ? Since most teachers are focused on honing theoretical skills rather than boosting creativity , they assign homework that doesn’t help students showcase their creative nature. With the growing amount of homework assignments, children don’t seek out creative ways to complete their tasks; they are focused on submitting tasks without spending much time or effort. Most kids study for the test and forget, and it’s no doubt that this approach leads to the loss of creativity, which is an important soft skill every person needs.

If you have ever paid attention to the homework statistics, you know that getting a great number of homework assignments won’t help to become smarter. It has a negative effect on physical and mental health which also affects academic performance. All in all, it seems to be a closed circle: young people should keep a balance in life to stay happy and productive and working too much on assignments isn’t the way to achieve it. Thus, it’s important to control how much time students spend doing homework.

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Exercise Is Great for Mental Health, But How Much Is Too Much?

Pekic / Getty Images

Key Takeaways

• Intense workouts might be detrimental to mental health, new research has suggested.
• Memory might also be affected by more intense exercise.
• Exercise has many benefits, but there's no one-size-fits-all approach—a personalized exercise routine is best.

It's common knowledge that exercise has lots of psychological benefits, but how much is too much? A recent study has suggested that intense workouts could be detrimental to mental health and memory. 

Researchers at Dartmouth University found that, while exercise can have a positive effect on mental health, not all forms and intensities of exercise will be equally effective.

They asked 113 Fitbit users to undertake a series of memory tests and answer questions about their mental health, as well as share exercise data from the previous year.

Understanding the Research

While the researchers expected that higher levels of activity would correlate to better mental health and memory performance, the results weren’t quite so simple.

In fact, those exercising at lower intensities did better on some memory tests, while those exercising at higher intensities did better on others. In terms of mental health, those exercising at higher intensities reported higher levels of stress , while those exercising at lower intensities reported lower levels of anxiety and depression.

Whereas previous research in this area has focused on exercise and memory over shorter timeframes, this research looked at the effects of exercise on memory over the longer term. The data the researchers focused on included daily step counts, average heart rates, and the time spent exercising in different ‘heart rate zones.’

Exercise and Memory

Researchers also saw connections between mental health and memory. Participants who reported anxiety or depression generally performed better on the spatial and associative memory tasks , the types of memory associated with locations, and the ability to remember connections between concepts or other memories respectively.

In comparison, participants who reported bipolar disorder performed better on the episodic memory tasks—this is the type of memory associated with autobiographical events, like what you did yesterday or last weekend. Participants who reported high-stress levels tended to do poorly on the associative memory tasks.

“When it comes to physical activity, memory, and mental health, there’s a really complicated dynamic at play that cannot be summarized in single sentences like ‘walking improves your memory’ or ‘stress hurts your memory,’” said lead author Jeremy Manning, an assistant professor of psychological and brain sciences at Dartmouth University, in a press release . “Instead, specific forms of physical activity and specific aspects of mental health seem to affect each aspect of memory differently.”

Smriti Joshi, lead psychologist at Wysa

You don’t have to push yourself or ‘feel the burn’ to get benefits from exercise, for either physical or mental wellbeing.

In comparison, participants who reported bipolar disorder performed better on the episodic memory tasks – this is the type of memory associated with autobiographical events, like what you did yesterday or last weekend. Participants who reported high stress levels tended to do poorer at the associative memory tasks.

“When it comes to physical activity, memory, and mental health, there’s a really complicated dynamic at play that cannot be summarized in single sentences like ‘walking improves your memory’ or ‘stress hurts your memory,’” said lead author Jeremy Manning, an assistant professor of psychological and brain sciences at Dartmouth University, in a press release .

“Instead, specific forms of physical activity and specific aspects of mental health seem to affect each aspect of memory differently,” says Manning.

Take These Findings With a Grain of Salt

Of course, exercise does bring a number of mental health benefits. Running reduces the risk of depression, for example.

As Elena Touroni, PhD, a consultant psychologist and co-founder of The Chelsea Psychology Clinic comments, “When you exercise, your body releases feel-good hormones, endorphins, and serotonin, which give you a natural energy boost and promote positive feelings in the body. Your body and mind also become better at managing the stress hormone, cortisol.”

She goes on to explain that people often find that exercise is a good release of pent-up energy, helping them break cyclical thoughts and give them a clear head, and that exercising can boost self-esteem too: “The increase in energy can help you feel stronger in yourself and more confident to take on any challenges in your life.” 

Can We Exercise Too Much?

“You don’t have to push yourself or ‘feel the burn’ to get benefits from exercise, for either physical or mental wellbeing,” says Smriti Joshi , lead psychologist at Wysa . 

She explains that there are all sorts of factors that may impact decisions on the type and amount of exercise we do, from our age to our general health. 

Daniela Beivide, PhD

While exposing ourselves to some physical stress during exercise is a good thing, prolonged high-intensity activity can actually keep our nervous system in a 'fight-or-flight' state.

“What is important is to try and be a little more physically active than you are now, and it could mean just doing stretches or going for walks with friends or loved ones regularly. You could choose to build on this and increase the duration or bring in more variety and make it fun,” she says.

“You don’t have to exercise rigorously every day to reap the benefits of exercise,” says Daniela Beivide, PhD , Director of Content, Research, and UX at Holly Health . “Even more accessible movements like walking or gardening cause improvements in mood. Some of the possible mechanisms of this relationship include reduced inflammation, better regulation of the stress response, and increased production of some neurotransmitters such as serotonin.” 

Taking exercising to excess can be harmful too— exercise addiction is a very real issue, and as Joshi explains it can lead to physical complications like injuries, fractures, and amenorrhea , the absence of menstruation. 

Personalized Exercise is Best

While the findings are interesting and pose various questions, there were limitations to the study. For example, the research doesn't answer whether different forms of exercise actively cause changes in memory and mental health, or whether people who partake in certain forms of exercise might have similar memory or mental health profiles.

For example, the fact that people who did higher intensity exercises reported higher levels of stress may indicate nothing more than people who are more stressed trying to release more energy through higher-intensity exercise. 

Manning went on to say that additional research could be beneficial: “For example, to help students prepare for an exam or reduce their depression symptoms, specific exercise regimens could be designed to help improve their cognitive performance and mental health.”

“The findings of the study show that everyone has unique needs, strengths, and challenges, and it’s worth taking a personalized approach to exercise,” says Joshi. “Whether that’s by working with a trained professional, or just listening to your body and doing more of what makes you feel physically and mentally stronger."

“It might not be that the actual quantity or intensity of the exercise isn’t right, but the ‘why’ behind it. If it’s to punish yourself for eating something, to keep up with that person you saw on Instagram, or because you’re addicted to it, those are negative signs.”

Beivide agrees, explaining that intense physical activity is a form of stress in itself. “While exposing ourselves to some physical stress during exercise is a good thing, prolonged high-intensity activity can actually keep our nervous system in a 'fight-or-flight' state, which is what happens when we are going through a stressful situation.”

She stresses the importance of a balance between physical challenges and resting, the latter calming our nervous system and helping us go back to “a state of ‘rest and digest,’ which helps calm the mind and improve cognitive function.”

What This Means For You

Exercise is good for us, but that doesn't mean we should always be pushing ourselves to the extreme. When it comes to mental wellness it's all about balance. Rest is important too, as is considering the type of exercise you're doing. Less intense forms of exercise can be just as effective—and as this study shows, might be more suitable for some people.

Manning JR, Notaro GM, Chen E, Fitzpatrick PC. Fitness tracking reveals task-specific associations between memory, mental health, and physical activity .  Sci Rep . 2022;12(1):13822. doi:10.1038/s41598-022-17781-0

Choi KW, Chen CY, Stein MB, et al. Assessment of bidirectional relationships between physical activity and depression among adults: A 2-sample mendelian randomization study .  JAMA Psychiatry . 2019;76(4):399-408. doi:10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2018.4175

How does screen time affect kids' health?

If you’re a parent, you’ll be well-acquainted with one of the more hotly debated parenting topics: screen time and kids. On the one hand, screen time helps kids learn, develop creativity and supports social interaction and connection.

But too much screen time can negatively impact your child – not just their development but their physical health, too. So how exactly does screen time impact your child’s physical health? And how can you help them develop a positive relationship with screens?

How much screen time is OK?

The Australian  guidelines for screen time are part of its 24-hour movement guidelines. These prescribe the amount of time we should spend each day on physical activity, sleep and screen time to maintain physical and mental health and wellbeing.

The screen time guidelines, which are based on seated activity, recommend:

• no screen time for children under two
• no more than one hour of screen time for children aged two to five
• no more than two hours of recreational screen time outside of school work from the age of five to 17.

But  just   17%  to 23% of Australian pre-schoolers and 15% of 5 to 12-year-olds meet these  recommendations .

Many parents worry about screen use and their children. Research shows it helps if you watch with your kids and talk about the program. Photo credit: Pexels

How screen time affects kids’ diets and health

Children with higher screen time are more likely to engage in mindless eating and  overeating . When they’re distracted by screens, kids can miss important signals from their brains letting them know they’re full.

They’re also more likely to crave and eat unhealthier foods. This is driven, in part, by junk food  advertising accompanying children’s content  on screens.

The lesser-known way too much screen time affects a child’s diet is by impacting their sleep. For children and adolescents,  adequate sleep  is:

• 11 to 14 hours, including naps, for toddlers
• 10 to 13 hours, including naps, for three-to five-year-olds
• nine to 11 hours for kids aged five to 13
• eight to ten hours for teenagers.

Research shows a child’s ability to get adequate sleep is impacted by screen time. A  review of 67 studies  of school-aged children and adolescents found screen time was associated with shorter and later sleep in 90% of the studies reviewed.

We need  adequate sleep  to regulate two essential hormones – ghrelin and leptin – that manage our hunger and appetite. Getting less than our recommended sleep  disrupts our appetite hormones , resulting in an increased desire to eat.

It also leads to increased  impulsive behaviour  linked to food choices, which often results in us reaching for foods high in sugar, fats and salt for immediate gratification. So if your child is not getting the sleep they need, there’s a good chance they’ll be using their pester power to satisfy their craving for sugary, fatty and salty foods the next day.

hildren may crave more junk foods if they’re not getting enough sleep.. Photo credit: Pexels

Finally, more time indoors looking at screens can mean less time being physically active. Australia’s guidelines  recommend  children do at least 60 minutes each day of physical activity that makes the heart beat faster (or at least one hour of “energetic play” for pre-schoolers). The 60 minutes doesn’t have to be all in one go – it can be made up of several shorter sessions through the day.

What can parents do?

Fortunately, there are some practical steps you can take to ensure your child has a healthy relationship with screens and ensure they’re getting enough sleep and physical activity.

1. Establish screen time rules

Consider guidelines for your child’s age and cover expectations for where, when and how screens are used. Young kids playing an educational game on a tablet in the family room might be OK, while watching YouTube in the bedroom might not.

Make mealtimes and the bedroom at bedtime screen-free zones. Involve your children, particularly teenagers, in the process to ensure everyone follows the rules.

2. Spend time outdoors

Try establishing regular time in your family’s schedule for physical activity outdoors, whether a daily visit to the park or sports on the weekend. Making sure your child gets enough physical activity daily also supports their sleep and overall health.

Like rule-setting, involving your child in the activity choice will make them more willing to participate.

3. Be a role model

Kids closely observe and mimic their parents, so the best way to ensure your child has healthy screen time habits is to adopt them yourself. Apply rules to your own screen use at home, including being mindful of being distracted by never-ending notifications.

4. Make your child’s bedroom a sleep sanctuary

Ensuring your child’s bedroom is quiet, comfortable and dark enough is essential for a good night’s sleep. This includes being at a comfortable temperature (18°C to 22°C). Store toys and screens in other rooms so your child associates their bedroom with sleep time, not playtime.

The article was originally published in  The Conversation  as "We’re told to limit kids’ screen time. But how does it actually affect their health?" Written by Dr Nick Fuller,  Charles Perkins Centre Research Program Leader, University of Sydney.

Hero image: Pexels Cotton Bro Studios

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How stress can increase risk of mental and physical ill-health among elite athletes

by Ella McLoughlin, Nottingham Trent University

Stress—it is something we all encounter in our daily lives, shaping our health and well-being in ways that are both subtle and profound. Whether it's a looming work deadline, personal relationship problems, or missing a bus on the way to work, it is clear that stressors pervade all aspects of our lives.

One particular group of individuals who are exposed to stressors on a different level are elite-level athletes.

Athletes face a unique set of stressors that go beyond the typical day-to-day challenges. This can present itself in the form of a heated rivalry with your opponents during a big game, or navigating the complex dynamics of a coach-athlete relationship.

When it comes to competing, elite athletes do so in highly visible arenas characterized by narrow margins of victory.

The visibility has been further magnified and expanded with the advancement of technology, resulting in athletes' lives being scrutinized like never before, often under the gaze of an unforgiving media and public.

But like the rest of us, athletes are still humans who experience stressors and worries associated with everything from mundane daily hassles to major life events, such as the loss of a loved one.

While it is common for us to view athletes as "super-humans" who repeatedly produce world-class performances without falter, it is important to remember that athletes are real people with real emotions.

This can be demonstrated by Victoria Azarenka who retired from the Miami Open in 2022 due to the stressors in her personal life. Indeed, she stated: "I shouldn't have gone on the court today… The last few weeks have been extremely stressful in my personal life … I always look forward to the challenge and pressure of competition but today it was too much."

While it has historically been a rare occurrence to see athletes demonstrate their vulnerabilities publicly, we are seeing this more and more with several—including the likes of Emma Raducanu—prioritizing their own health and well-being.

Because of these real-world examples, it is not surprising that there has been an increase in research conducted within this topic area. Research suggests that practitioners working with elite athletes should have a greater understanding of the psychological load experienced by sport performers.

As a result, research has recently begun to focus on the combined and cumulative effect of stressors over the entire lifespan, as well as examining how sporting and non-sporting stressors interact and accumulate over time. This is particularly important given that sports performers do not live in a vacuum. Rather, they function within highly complex environments which exerts major influences on them and their performances.

Recent research has shed light on the impact these stressors can have on athletes' mental and physical health. It turns out, the stressors athletes encounter, both on (e.g., underperformance at a significant event) and off (e.g., financial problems) the field, can lead to significant health issues like depressive symptoms and physical illnesses such as respiratory infections.

But if we explore this further, the impact of these stressors isn't just about the number of stressful events; it's also about the nature of these events. Exposure to stressors which are chronic in nature (i.e., on-going for six months or more), for instance, tends to be more damaging than acute stressors (i.e., short-term exposures that have a clear beginning and end).

If these stressful experiences have happened more recently in adulthood as opposed to childhood, they also seem to have a stronger negative impact on health-related outcomes.

And, unsurprisingly, stressors that are more severe over a lifetime can be more harmful than those we encounter frequently but are less intense.

Recent studies have begun exploring this relationship further by identifying how stressor exposure impacts health and well-being among athletes. One key finding is that athletes who have faced more severe lifetime stressors, from either their personal lives or their sporting careers, tend to view stressful events as a threat (e.g., demands exceed personal coping resources) vs. a challenge (e.g., sufficient coping resources to meet the demands of a stressful encounter).

This mindset can lead to poorer health outcomes, including an increased risk of depression. On a biological level, research shows that exposure to a moderate number of stressors can lead to adaptive cardiovascular responses, like a temporary increase in heart rate that helps the body handle stress.

However, too few or too many stressors can have the opposite effect, resulting in maladaptive cardiovascular responses.

As an example, this could lead to elevated heart rate over a prolonged period, which increases an individual's susceptibility to cardiovascular disease. Delving deeper into the psychological, social, and behavioral impacts, recent qualitative research has shed light on how exposure to a high number of stressors can lead to maladaptive coping strategies, difficulties in forming relationships, and even risky behaviors.

In an ideal world, we would attempt to eliminate or at least reduce the stressors experienced by elite athletes to boost their long-term health and well-being. But, let's be real…that is not always possible or even desirable.

Instead of trying to eliminate stress, athletes can focus on how they respond to and manage stressors (e.g., viewing stressors as beneficial). By adopting this mindset, athletes can turn the inevitable stressors of their high-stakes careers into tools for enhancing performance.

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What working long hours does to your body

Experts warn that working long hours can increase your risk of heart disease, lower back pain, and type 2 diabetes—and the tipping point might be sooner than you think.

Increased stress. Anxiety. Lower back pain. High blood pressure. If you’ve been working long hours at the office, then you might be intimately acquainted with some of the ways that overwork can have an impact on your health.

But even as debate rages over whether it’s time to switch to a four-day workweek, some workplaces are headed the other direction: In July, Greece passed legislation allowing some employers to mandate a six-day workweek, while Samsung is requiring its executives to work a six-day week. This raises the question of what impact working long hours has on the body.

In 2021, the World Health Organization and International Labor Organization released a report that looked at the health risks of overwork. The report found that working long hours, defined as more than 55 hours a week, was responsible for 745,000 deaths from stroke and heart disease in 2016—a 29 percent increase since 2000.    

“There’s sufficient data to show that excessive work is the first occupational disease in the world,” says Alexis Descatha, a researcher at the Hospital and University of Angers-Inserm, based in France. As research is showing, even a 40-hour workweek, which has long been upheld as the standard for work-life balance, may not be as good for our health as we once thought.    

The hidden consequences of overwork

The health effects of overwork can be both direct and indirect. The stress associated with working long hours can have a direct impact on your health, by keeping your body in a constant state of flight-or-flight. This in turn leads to raised cortisol levels , which affects blood sugar levels, and alters the immune system.

Over time, if this stress becomes chronic , it can lead to a number of health issues, such as high blood pressure, headaches, anxiety, depression, digestive issues, heart disease, heart attack, stroke, or sleep disturbances.    

( Do you have chronic stress? Look for these signs .)

Working long hours can also have an indirect effect, by taking away the time that a person can use to engage in healthy activities. “When you work too much, you don’t have time to sleep well, to eat well, to play sports,” Descatha says. By replacing leisure time activities, such as going for a walk or spending time with family, with more work, this can compound the negative health effects.    

As research is showing, these negative health impacts might not start showing up years down the road.   In the report released by the WHO and ILO , the majority of deaths related to overwork were in workers over the age of 60, who had reported working 55 hours or more while younger.

“Ten years seems to be the point at which we really see a step increase” in the cumulative health effects of overwork, says Grace Sembajwe, a researcher at Indiana University School of Public Health in Bloomington, Indiana. For those who work long hours over a shorter period—finishing up a stressful project, for example—the health effects are lesser, and can be mitigated if they stop working long hours.      

Although the strongest effects are seen in workers who work more than 55 hours a week, Sembajwe notes these effects are also seen in workers who work more than 40 hours a week.

“Even the 40-hour week isn’t that great, from a health perspective,” Sembajwe says. As research is showing , reduced workweeks result in better life quality, improved sleep, and reduced stress . As a result, some countries are starting to put in protections for shorter workweeks and longer vacation times. This includes Iceland, where 86 percent of workers have a four-day workweek , and Denmark, which has an official 37-hour workweek , with five weeks of mandated vacation time per year.    

How sitting too long increases your risk  

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, civilian workers sit an average of 3.46 hours a day. For office workers, this number might be as much eight to 10 hours a day, while for manual labor jobs, this might be as little as one hour a day.

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For office workers, spending long hours sitting at a desk can have an effect over time, by increasing their risk for developing a number of chronic diseases , such as high blood pressure or Type 2 diabetes.     And that risk only increases the longer you spend at work. “If you increase your working hours, you are increasing your sitting time,” says Aidan Buffey, a researcher at the University of Limerick in Ireland, whose research focuses on the health effects of sedentary time in office workers.

How much sitting is too much? As Buffey notes, the tipping point seems to be somewhere around eight to 10 hours a day, with sedentary time greater than 11 hours leading to a much higher risk of developing health issues. For workers who follow up their sedentary time at work with sedentary activities such as watching TV during their free time, this can quickly add up to greater than eight hours a day.    

Office workers are also at a higher risk for certain overuse injuries, such as neck or lower back pain , due to sitting for long hours every day. “Sitting is a stressful position for your spine,” says Ryan Steiner, a physical therapist at the Cleveland Clinic, in Cleveland, Ohio.    

These health issues can be offset by exercise, with the risks noticeably decreasing in people who get an average of 150 to 300 minutes of physical activity a week . These effects can also be offset by taking short breaks throughout the day, whether it’s walking for a few minutes or shifting to a standing desk.    

The physical activity paradox  

For people working in manual labor, however, the increased physical activity can work against them, a phenomenon known as the physical activity paradox . Although increased physical activity in your leisure time helps guard against cardiovascular disease, increased physical activity as part of work actually increases the risk of cardiovascular disease.    

Researchers are still trying to understand the reasons for this paradox but one possible explanation is that, unlike in your leisure time, workers don’t have control over the length and intensity of their physical activity.

“The body is in a bit of chronic stress,” Buffey says. “They’re also not able to recover because they have to go back to work the next day.” The effects of chronic stress can also be compounded by other lifestyle factors, such as not being able to eat a balanced diet or prioritize sleep.

( 7 tips for getting better sleep .)

Elite athletes, on the other hand, don’t see a negative effect from their high levels of physical activity . This can likely be attributed to the fact that in order to maintain their athletic performance, they have to prioritize rest, recovery, and good nutrition outside of work.    

Working conditions matter—and flexibility makes a difference  

Your working environment can either amp up the stress of working long hours or it can offset those health risks.  

As research is showing , workers who have greater control over their working environment—such as being able to control the pace at which they work or the number of responsibilities that they take on— report less stress compared to their peers with less control. This in turn translates to better health outcomes, such as a decreased risk of heart disease. “We do know that jobs with high demand and low control are associated with cardiovascular disease,” Sembajwe says.    

Employees who have flexibility over their work schedule, which includes being able to adjust it as needed to accommodate the demands of their home life, have better mental health than employees who don’t have control over their schedule. As research shows , this effect is true, even when comparing employees who work a similar number of hours each week.

“Work flexibility itself, independent of numbers of hours worked, independent of paid time off, is negatively correlated with depression or anxiety,” says Pearl McElfish, a researcher at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, in Little Rock, Arkansas. “People who have that flexibility report less anxiety and depression than people who don’t have that flexibility.”    

  As it turns out, when it comes to working to live, rather than living to work, we all stand to benefit from a shorter, more flexible workweek.

Related Topics

• HEALTH CONDITIONS
• MENTAL HEALTH

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Why trigger points cause so much pain—and how you can relieve it

This is the biggest health challenge women face in their 40s.

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Fact-Checking Claims About Tim Walz’s Record

Republicans have leveled inaccurate or misleading attacks on Mr. Walz’s response to protests in the summer of 2020, his positions on immigration and his role in the redesign of Minnesota’s flag.

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By Linda Qiu

Since Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota was announced as the Democratic nominee for vice president, the Trump campaign and its allies have gone on the attack.

Mr. Walz, a former teacher and football coach from Nebraska who served in the National Guard, was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 2006 and then as Minnesota’s governor in 2018. His branding of former President Donald J. Trump as “weird” this year caught on among Democrats and helped catapult him into the national spotlight and to the top of Vice President Kamala Harris’s list of potential running mates.

The Republican accusations, which include questions over his military service , seem intended at undercutting a re-energized campaign after President Biden stepped aside and Ms. Harris emerged as his replacement at the top of the ticket. Mr. Trump and his allies have criticized, sometimes inaccurately, Mr. Walz’s handling of protests in his state, his immigration policies, his comments about a ladder factory and the redesign of his state’s flag.

Here’s a fact check of some claims.

What Was Said

“Because if we remember the rioting in the summer of 2020, Tim Walz was the guy who let rioters burn down Minneapolis.” — Senator JD Vance of Ohio, the Republican nominee for vice president, during a rally on Wednesday in Philadelphia

This is exaggerated. Mr. Walz has faced criticism for not quickly activating the National Guard to quell civil unrest in Minneapolis in the summer of 2020 after the murder of George Floyd by a police officer. But claims that he did not respond at all, or that the city burned down, are hyperbolic.

Mr. Floyd was murdered on May 25, 2020, and demonstrators took to the streets the next day . The protests intensified, with some vandalizing vehicles and setting fires. More than 700 state troopers and officers with the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources’ mobile response team were deployed on May 26 to help the city’s police officers, according to a 2022 independent assessment by the state’s Department of Public Safety of the response to the unrest.

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