Video games, computers, and TV shows are letting kids spend more and more time indoors doing absolutely nothing (and they’re probably eating junk food). Doing that all day isn’t exactly the best health wise and it’s because of this, and junk food, that childhood obesity rates have soared in the past few years. An easy solution would be to limit the amount of time your child can spend on the computer, playing video games, and watching TV, or by having a mandatory 20 minute exercise “break” each day. Bet you never thought that another solution to this problem involves video games? Meet the Step2Play, which only lets your child play games if he does a bit of exercising first.

Don’t bother getting this for a teenager, and if you do, don’t expect it to get used. Even if he ever stepped on the Step2Play, which is designed for children 12 and under, it would probably break, but the look of the unit would be enough turn him off before that could ever happen. The actual function of the Step2Play is simple: if little Johnny wants to play Grand Theft Auto, he’s going to have to prove himself worthy by burning off some calories first. No exercise, no games.

Anything that will cut down on child obesity is a good thing, but it’s just sad that a device like this is needed these days. Kids should want to go out and play, exercise isn’t always taking a run, playing with friends is exercise too. If this is the only thing that will get your child to do any form of exercise, you probably need to throw out the PS2 entirely.

BBC Article [via Uber-Review]