Lifestyle and Perceived Well-Being in Children and Teens: Importance of Exercise and Sedentary Behavior

Background/Objectives: Childhood/youth are ideally the best periods to teach healthy behaviors; unfortunately, children/adolescents are frequently characterized by unhealthy lifestyles and reduced well-being. Lifestyle improvement early in life may play a fundamental role in determining present health, preventing many chronic diseases, and fostering well-being. Having a clear picture of the lifestyle characteristics of a group can help institutions and schools define effective educational and intervention strategies. This observational study aims to examine whether information collected from children and adolescents about their lifestyles and perceptions of well-being could help identify particular groups that deserve specific interventions, implemented by the school, to improve their overall health. Methods: After administering a simple lifestyle/well-being questionnaire to 225 children/adolescents at an Italian school complex, we investigated the relationships between lifestyles and perceptions of well-being by constructing statistical indicators through nonlinear principal component analysis. Then, we defined lifestyle typologies based on lifestyle indicators and studied the distribution of the well-being indicator across such typologies, also adjusting for sex and age effects. Results: The study shows that lifestyle worsens with age (p < 0.001) and influences overall well-being perception. We identified four lifestyle typologies by combining two indicators of sedentary behavior and sleep, and of quality of nutrition and the volume of physical activity. The healthier the lifestyle, the better the overall well-being perception is (represented by the indicator that includes the perceived quality of health, sleep, and academic performance) (p = 0.005). Conclusions: Tailored educational/intervention strategies that consider specific groups’ characteristics, rather than general counseling, might be more effective at improving health/well-being.