The 24-Hour Movement Guidelines for the Early Years represent an integrated approach to healthy development in early childhood, recognizing that sleep, physical activity, and sedentary behavior are not isolated habits but interlocking components of a single 24-hour cycle. For children aged 3 to 4 years, the guidelines recommend between 10 and 13 hours of good-quality sleep per day, at least 180 minutes of total physical activity spread across the day, of which at least 60 minutes should be moderate-to-vigorous intensity, no more than one hour of screen time, and no more than one hour of restrained sitting, such as being confined in a stroller, high chair, or car seat for extended periods. Meeting the recommendations individually is one matter; achieving all of them simultaneously on a consistent basis is substantially harder, and that is precisely where the new study focused its attention.

Measurement rigor distinguishes this surveillance effort from earlier surveys that relied largely on parental questionnaires. The research team, led by Sabrina Buchanan and Mark S. Tremblay of the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario Research Institute, together with collaborators from institutions including Western University, Dalhousie University, the University of Alberta, the University of British Columbia, the University of Montreal, Acadia University, and the University of Wollongong, fitted each child with a waist-worn ActiGraph wGT3X+ accelerometer for seven consecutive days and nights. These devices captured objective data on movement intensity and sleep duration, while parents reported on their children’s screen time and time spent restrained in seats and strollers. The study formed part of the SUNRISE International Study of Movement Behaviours in the Early Years and was funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.

Within the final analytic sample of 631 children, 29.0 percent met the overall movement guidelines when accelerometer-estimated measures were prioritized. That headline figure conceals a striking asymmetry in how children performed on each individual behavior. On the positive side, physical activity proved to be a genuine strength of this cohort: every child in the sample accumulated the recommended 180 minutes of total daily physical activity, and 92.4 percent achieved the more demanding threshold of at least 60 minutes of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity per day. Sleep was also largely on target, with between 74.6 percent and 92.0 percent of children meeting the sleep recommendation, depending on whether accelerometer estimates or parent reports were used.

The weak link in the 24-hour equation was sedentary behavior. Only 40.7 percent of children met the sedentary behavior recommendations overall, and the two components told divergent stories. Screen time was the more problematic of the pair, with just 57.1 percent of children staying within the one-hour daily limit, while 71.8 percent met the recommendation for restrained sedentary time. In an era when tablets, smartphones, and televisions are woven into daily family life, the finding that more than four in ten preschoolers exceed recommended screen limits will resonate with pediatricians and early childhood educators who have warned that early excessive screen exposure can displace active play, conversation, and sleep, all of which are critical to brain development during these years.

Beyond the headline prevalence figures, the study uncovered meaningful demographic patterns in who was meeting which guidelines. Girls were significantly less likely than boys to meet the moderate-to-vigorous physical activity recommendation, with an adjusted odds ratio of 0.37, meaning their odds were less than half those of boys. This gender gap, emerging as early as ages 3 and 4, suggests that differences in physical activity participation between males and females are established well before formal schooling begins, reinforcing calls from the study’s authors for targeted strategies to support young girls’ physical activity participation, including inclusive play environments and deliberate encouragement from parents and early childhood educators.

Geography also mattered, though in an unexpected direction. Children living in urban areas were more likely to meet sedentary behavior recommendations than their rural counterparts, with an adjusted odds ratio of 1.51. The authors note that systematic monitoring of preschool movement behaviors has often overlooked subgroups such as males versus females and urban versus rural residents, making these comparisons an important contribution. The rural disadvantage in sedentary time may reflect longer durations spent restrained in car seats during travel to childcare, services, and activities, though the study’s cross-sectional design cannot definitively establish the underlying causes.

Perhaps most intriguing were the age-related findings. Older children within the sample were less likely to meet the overall guidelines, with an adjusted odds ratio of 0.49 per unit increase in age, and less likely to meet sleep recommendations, with an odds ratio of 0.96. Yet the same older children were more likely to meet the moderate-to-vigorous physical activity recommendation, with an odds ratio of 1.08. This pattern suggests that as children approach kindergarten age, their waking hours become more active, but their sleep appears to erode, possibly reflecting later bedtimes, earlier morning routines, or the creeping influence of evening screen use. The net effect is that the delicate balance of the full 24-hour day tips away from the healthy profile as children grow older within the preschool window.

The authors are careful to frame these results within the limitations of a cross-sectional design, which captures a snapshot rather than trajectories over time, and within a sample drawn from childcare settings across five provinces. Methodological choices also mattered: the proportion meeting overall guidelines shifted depending on whether accelerometer-derived sleep estimates or parental reports were prioritized, a reminder that measurement modality can materially alter surveillance conclusions. Even so, the direction of the evidence is consistent with broader international literature showing that very young children are moving enough and sleeping reasonably well but sitting too much in front of screens.

The study’s conclusions point toward a clear public health priority. Because most children in the sample already met sleep and physical activity recommendations, the greatest gains lie in limiting sedentary time, particularly screen time, across the entire preschool population. At the same time, the authors emphasize that continued encouragement of healthy sleep and physical activity remains essential, and that specific, tailored strategies should be developed to support young girls’ physical activity participation. As part of the SUNRISE international surveillance network, this Canadian dataset also provides a benchmark against which future policy interventions, such as screen time guidance, active play programming in early childhood education and care settings, and provincial health promotion campaigns, can be evaluated. With early childhood representing a uniquely plastic developmental window, the difference between 29 percent and a far higher proportion of children meeting all four movement targets may ultimately be measured not in odds ratios but in lifelong health trajectories.

The SUNRISE initiative, of which this Canadian dataset forms a part, was designed to fill a conspicuous gap in global surveillance. While movement behavior monitoring has become routine for school-aged children and adolescents in many countries, comparable data for the early years have been sparse, and the SUNRISE network has sought to harmonize protocols so that preschool findings can eventually be compared across nations with very different childcare systems, climates, and cultural norms around sleep and screen use. The Canadian contribution, spanning five provinces and drawing participants through childcare centres, therefore serves both a national policy purpose and an international comparative one.

The integrated nature of the guidelines themselves reflects a relatively recent shift in thinking among exercise science and pediatric sleep researchers. Earlier guidance treated physical activity, sedentary behavior, and sleep as separate domains with separate targets, but time is inherently finite within a day, so gains in one behavior necessarily displace another. Modeling the full 24 hours as a single continuum allows researchers and practitioners to see trade-offs explicitly, and it explains why the proportion meeting all recommendations simultaneously is so much lower than the proportion meeting any single recommendation in this sample.

The accelerometer protocol also merits attention. Seven consecutive days of waist-worn monitoring captures both weekday and weekend behavior, which matters because preschoolers’ routines often differ markedly between childcare days and home days. Prioritizing device-based estimates over parental report reduces the social desirability bias that plagues questionnaire measures of screen time and sleep, though the divergence between accelerometer-estimated and parent-reported sleep prevalence in this study illustrates that even objective devices rest on assumptions about what constitutes sleep onset and wake.

Finally, the childcare setting through which families were recruited is itself a promising intervention lever. Early childhood education and care environments shape much of preschoolers’ daily movement, and provincial licensing standards governing active outdoor play and screen exposure could translate these surveillance findings into practical policy change.

Subject of Research: Compliance of 3- and 4-year-old Canadian children with 24-hour movement guidelines for sleep, physical activity, and sedentary behavior

Article Title: Proportion of 3- and 4-year-old children meeting individual and combinations of 24-hour movement guidelines across five Canadian provinces: a SUNRISE study

Article References: Buchanan, S., Bremer, E., Bruijns, B. A., Caldwell, H. A. T., Carson, V., Chong, K. H., Faulkner, G., Harandian, K., Hawthorne, M., Kuzik, N., Martins, R., Ong, M., Pagani, L., Potter, M., Tucker, P., & Tremblay, M. S. (2026). Proportion of 3- and 4-year-old children meeting individual and combinations of 24-hour movement guidelines across five Canadian provinces: a SUNRISE study. Journal of Activity, Sedentary and Sleep Behaviors. https://doi.org/10.1186/s44167-026-00113-2

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1186/s44167-026-00113-2

Keywords: 24-hour movement guidelines, preschool children, physical activity, sedentary behavior, screen time, sleep, SUNRISE study, accelerometry, public health surveillance, Canada, early childhood, health promotion