The Importance of Physical Activity and Awareness in Today's Digital Society — How is the curriculum like in the Swedish School System?
Author: Paniz Yousefi
Movement and physical activity are fundamental human rights for all children and youth, but to what extent do they truly impact their daily lives?
According to the Curriculum for Sport and health up to 9th grade, movement and healthy lifestyle habits are fundamental to human well-being. Positive experiences with sports, physical activities, and outdoor life during childhood play a crucial role in determining whether we remain physically active throughout life. Through movement and health-promoting habits, individuals gain the tools to influence and take responsibility for their own health.
Physical education up to 9th grade aims to help students develop diverse movement skills and an interest in being physically active and spending time in nature. Through instruction, students should be given the opportunity to establish healthy lifestyle habits that enable them to influence their health throughout life. The curriculum emphasises key physical abilities and how they contribute to success, such as running, swimming, and navigating in unfamiliar environments with maps.
In gymnasium (from 10th to 12th grade), the focus shifts to the idea that not everyone must love to do sports, but everyone needs to learn the importance of movement and healthy lifestyle. The teacher’s role today is to help students understand how to use their bodies to build themselves up rather than break themselves down.
Physical Education and Health at the gymnasium is divided into four categories: endurance, strength, coordination, and training development.
Endurance — students first undergo an initial fitness test to assess their baseline endurance. Together with their teacher, they then learn how to create a personalised training plan to improve their fitness over time. A final test is conducted to measure progress. In the past, all students were expected to reach a standardised level of “good fitness,” but today, the focus is on individual differences. The goal is to help students understand their own endurance levels and what they can do to reach their personal maximum heart rate.
Strength — focuses on functional strength rather than traditional gym-based workouts. Each student designs their own strength assessments to evaluate their capabilities and track progress.
Coordination is a key factor in physical ability, and students undergo various tests to assess their coordination in different areas. This category also encourages self-coaching, as students create their own development plans to improve their coordination over time.
Training Development — The final category focuses on the ability to design and manage your own training progress. It involves setting personal goals and creating a well-structured, sustainable plan to achieve them in a healthy way. The goal is to develop the skills needed to take control of your own fitness journey and become your own coach.
In today’s society, young people are becoming increasingly dependent on digital interactions, often at the expense of physical activity and real-life social connections. Trends play a significant role in shaping young people’s priorities, and today, many are more focused on their appearance than on overall health. Instead of using exercise to build strength and well-being, some push themselves to unhealthy extremes in an attempt to lose weight or achieve a certain look. This shift in motivation can turn physical activity from a positive habit into a harmful obsession.
The absence of structured recess activities in school has led many students to spend their breaks on their phones, making it more challenging to prevent mental health issues. Instead of engaging in physical play or outdoor activities, they remain seated, which limits movement and social interaction—key factors in overall well-being. In the Swedish school it was mandatory to be physical active on the recess but this is not the case anymore in all schools.
For teachers, mobile phones and the internet present a significant challenge. Not only do they contribute to increased online crime, but they are also highly addictive. The human brain does not fully develop until around the age of 25, which means young people often lack the ability to fully grasp the consequences of their actions. This lack of awareness can lead to misunderstandings, miscommunication, and reduced physical mobility, as children and teens are more likely to chat online rather than walk or cycle to meet their friends in person.
Another growing concern is the misconception that e-sports provide similar benefits to physical exercise. While gaming may cause a temporary rise in heart rate, this is primarily due to stress hormones, not improved cardiovascular fitness. In contrast, physical activity raises stress hormones during exercise but lowers them to a level below the starting point afterward, promoting relaxation and overall health. Stress from gaming, however, does not have the same recovery effect, leaving the body in a prolonged state of heightened stress.
This issue ties into the broader challenges discussed earlier, where the lack of structured physical activity in schools, increased screen time, and digital dependency make it harder for young people to develop a healthy relationship with movement. Without proper education on how the body functions, many fail to understand the long-term consequences of overtraining or unhealthy fitness habits. Schools play a crucial role in addressing this by providing knowledge about injury prevention, movement, balanced training, and how health can help them develop a greater sense of responsibility for their well-being rather than just aesthetics. By fostering awareness and promoting movement as a tool for health rather than appearance, educators can help students develop a healthier and more sustainable approach to fitness in today’s digital and trend-driven world.
The school have a greater responsibility for students’ health and future than ever before. In the past, physical education focused primarily on getting children and teenagers moving, providing a break from academics, and allowing the brain to rest. Now, it plays a much larger role in teaching students how to prevent injuries and develop a stronger sense of long-term consequential thinking.
In Sweden, Physical Education and Health is a mandatory subject in high school, totalling 100 hours throughout a student’s education. For students in academic preparatory programs, the course is completed in one year, with classes held twice a week. In vocational programs, however, it is spread over two years, with classes held once a week. This structured approach aims to equip students with the knowledge and skills necessary to maintain a healthy and active life beyond school.