The importance of social factors in the association between physical activity and depression in children

Physical activity is associated with reduced depression in youth and adults. However, our understanding of how different aspects of youth activities—specifically, the degree to which they are social, team-oriented, and physical—relate to mental health in children is less clear. Here we use a data-driven approach to characterize the degree to which physical and non-physical youth activities are social and team-oriented. We then examine the relationship between depressive symptoms and participation in different clusters of youth activities using mixed effect models and causal mediation analyses in 11,875 children from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study. We test our hypotheses in an original sample (n = 4520, NDA release 1.1) and replication sample of participants (n = 7355, NDA release 2.0.1). We show and replicate that social–physical activities are associated with lower depressive symptoms. Next, we demonstrate that social connections, measured by number of close friends, partially mediate the association between social–physical activities and lower depressive symptoms. Our results provide a rubric for using data-driven techniques to investigate different aspects of youth activities and highlight the social dynamics of physical activities as a possible protective factor against depression in childhood.