Keeping Children Active Through Digital Play

Due to the ongoing pandemic, children across the country became highly vulnerable as lower levels of physical activity affected their health and immunity. Sportz Village Foundation conducted a digital program with children from government schools in Tamil Nadu over a period of 10 weeks.

The goal of the program was to get children active right at their homes and help them stay physically and emotionally healthy during the COVID-related outbreak.

Goals of the Study

The study aimed to evaluate the user-friendliness of the digital platform through observed levels of children’s engagement.

Program Evaluation Criteria

The program was evaluated based on:

• The percentage of children using the platform week-to-week
• The percentage of children using the platform for the entire duration of the program
• The observed level of engagement among children using the digital platform

Children Stayed Active Throughout the Program

More than 55% of children continuously engaged with the program over the 10-week period.

In the facilitated version of the program, 85% of children remained active on a week-on-week basis. Even when the program was not facilitated by an adult or teacher, 75% of children continued to remain active.

This indicates that the digital content was self-directing and that the platform was user-friendly for children.

Continually Active Students Every Week

Across the three locations, children remained actively engaged throughout the 10-week period:

• Chennai: 60% of children were continuously active
• Krishnagiri: 51% of children were continuously active
• Namakkal: 62% of children were continuously active

The study shows that a simplified web-based digital platform with gamified and self-directing content can engage children effectively at scale, even in situations where adequate facilitation from teachers or adults is limited.