Small children are much more active than many adults assume: around 18,000 steps a day are typical between the ages of three and four. This emerges from an international study of more than 3,500 children in 44 countries, which was published in the specialist magazine “Lancet Child Adolesc Health”.
The data was collected between 2018 and 2025 using motion sensors worn on the hips of the three- and four-year-olds for at least three days.
The so-called weighted median was 18,542 steps daily. This means that half of the children took more steps, the other half took fewer steps. Three-year-olds achieved an average of around 17,500 steps, four-year-olds almost 19,000.
The differences between the individual children were enormous. The distribution ranged from about 1100 steps at the low end of the scale to about 29,800 steps at the maximum. This means that between a relatively sedentary child and a very active child there can be more than 25,000 steps in a single day.
Physical activity in early childhood is essential for growth and healthy development, write the more than 30 authors of the so-called Sunrise study.
However, they expressly do not make a recommendation for a specific number of steps for preschool children, as other factors play into their movement behavior. Future studies should correlate it with, among other things, sitting time and sleep behavior, they suggest.
The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends that three and four year olds get at least 180 minutes of exercise throughout the day - and at least 60 minutes of this should be of moderate to high intensity. There are no WHO step specifications for adults either. Based on the recommendations for physical activity for 18 to 64 year olds, studies have so far recommended 7,000 to 10,000 steps daily.
The Sunrise Project is coordinated by the University of Wollongong in Australia. The scientists found that children in low-income countries took an average of around 23,000 steps per day, just over 5,000 more than children in high-income countries.
From Europe, Scandinavian countries, Great Britain, Spain and Poland are included in the project, but not Germany. Low-income countries involved include India and Kenya. In addition, children in rural areas took almost 2,000 more steps than children in the city.
As found in previous movement studies, there is also a gap between boys and girls in this study. Three-year-old boys walked around 1,640 more steps per day than girls of the same age, while four-year-olds walked around 1,150 more steps per day.
According to the authors, the background may be differences between the genders in gaming behavior and leisure activities as well as socio-cultural influences that became apparent early on.
A suggestion from the research team: When developing strategies to promote physical activity in early childhood, special consideration should be given to girls and children who are heavier and who also take fewer steps.
