More Daily Steps Linked to Fewer Mental Health Problems in Young Teens

Young teens who took more steps each day had fewer mental health problems a year later, according to a study led by King’s College London with the University of Massachusetts Amherst. The study followed 5,515 American kids who wore Fitbits for three weeks.¹ It is an observational study, so it shows that more steps and better mental health went together. It cannot show that walking caused the improvement.¹

The finding matters because walking is free, and the step increases linked to better outcomes were modest. In this group, adding 1,000 to 2,000 daily steps, from any starting point, was associated with better mental health and brain structure.¹³

How the study worked

The kids came from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study, which recruited 11,879 children aged 9 to 10 at 21 sites across the United States to track how young minds and brains develop.²

Around age 11 to 12, participants wore Fitbit Charge 2 wrist devices. Their average age was 11.93, and 47.9% were girls. They averaged 9,595 steps a day, a respectable total for people who are not yet allowed to drive.²⁴ Because the devices counted the steps, the researchers did not have to rely on kids remembering how much they moved. The university’s announcement says that may be a more reliable way to capture everyday activity.¹

A year later, the young people and their parents filled out the Child Behavior Checklist, a standard questionnaire that covers anxiety, low mood and behavior problems.¹³

What the researchers found

More steps went with fewer problems. Teens averaging under 5,000 steps a day had the most symptoms, those around 8,000 had fewer, and those at 12,000 or more had the fewest.¹ The benefit did not level off anywhere in the range the team measured. Few teens had very high step counts, though, so it is unclear whether the pattern continues beyond that range.¹

The most active teens also had slightly thicker cortex, the brain’s outer layer, in two regions involved in movement and emotion regulation. That difference partly explained the link to better mental health.¹ The brain differences were small. “It’s preliminary, but it gives us a clearer idea of where to look next,” lead author Qingyang Li said in the university’s announcement.¹

The steps did not show up on report cards. The study found no link between step count and school performance.¹

The limits

The link held after the researchers accounted for kids’ earlier mental health problems. Even so, the direction could run the other way: teens with fewer problems may simply have been more active to begin with.¹ The study also did not test or recommend any particular step target.

The findings were published October 1, 2026, in JAMA Network Open by Qingyang Li, Amanda Paluch and Divyangana Rakesh.² Most coverage so far draws on the same King’s College London announcement, not on independent reporting or outside experts. The work was funded by the Brain & Behavior Research Foundation, the UK Medical Research Council and the Canadian Institute of Advanced Research Global Scholars Program.¹

What families can take from it

• Small bumps counted. Gains of 1,000 to 2,000 daily steps were associated with better outcomes, wherever a teen started.¹
• Sports stardom was not required. “It is not an all-or-nothing situation. Adolescents don’t need to be elite athletes to benefit,” Dr. Amanda Paluch of UMass Amherst said in the announcement.¹
• There is no magic number. The study found a steady pattern, not a threshold to hit.¹
• Everyday movement is the focus. “The goal is finding realistic, sustainable ways to move more, through everyday opportunities like walking to school, active play, and activities kids actually enjoy,” Paluch said.¹