The role of digital resources for promoting physical activity in the post-COVID-19 era: a multicenter study.

PurposeMany digital resources have been developed to support people in staying physically active, such as video tutorials or lessons, apps, social media, and exergames. The COVID-19 pandemic situation has significantly influenced the habits and lifestyles of the population, inducing the use of digital resources for ex-ercise, during forced confinement. In this context, our study aimed at evaluating how the epidemiological scenario deter-mined by the pandemic may have influenced some aspects re-lating to the current methods of carrying out physical activity in university students.MethodsStarting from the results of a pilot study conducted at the Uni-versity of Urbino, a multicentric online survey consisting of questions regarding physical activity habits, the use of digi-tal resources to stay active, and body weight changes before, during, and after the COVID-19 confinement period, has been started and is underway. Results have been related to the cur-rently perceived well-being evaluated through the WHO-5 questionnaire. ResultsThe previously conducted pilot study revealed an increase in the use of digital resources during the confinement period, as expected. Interestingly, after the end of the restrictions, the use of devices remained higher than before by 7%. Physical activi-ty levels were correlated with higher perceived well-being, and the use of digital resources was associated with low/moderate physical activity intensity and lower BMI values. In the multi-center study currently ongoing, a total of 11 universities have been involved with the purpose of obtaining data from several thousands of students. ConclusionsThe proportion of adults engaged in exercise, sport, or lifestyle PA in general has constantly decreased over years. This ap-plies also to university students, for which excessive stationary time has been recently described, with a consequent decrease in fitness level and higher abdominal adiposity. Therefore, targeted strategies for recreational PA promotion in younger adults are needed. This survey underlies the importance of an active lifestyle for general well-being and health status. Digital resources may represent a simple and cheaper way to stay ac-tive, particularly appealing and popular among young adults, and could be considered a good strategy to promote physical activity attendance in university students.