IELTS Essay: Cities and Exercise

Vocabulary

What do the words in bold below mean?

It is becoming increasingly difficult for the average citizen living in an urban area to set aside enough time for exercise. This is largely because of the rise of sedentary lifestyles and the best solutions involve moderate, individual changes.

The main causes of reduced physical activity by city residents is more modern ways of living. This relates first of all to technology. In the past, people were more likely to go out to meet with friends or take a trip to the cinema and now it is more common to chat with friends online and watch TV shows on Netflix at home. Combined with this is the widespread use of other technologies that reduce activity such as washing machines, apps for ordering food, and self-cleaning robots. All these factors together constitute a trend towards more passive lifestyles dependent on the modern comforts of 21st century technology.

Solutions for these problems ought to all involve individual initiative. Most people today are at least dimly aware of the dangers of addiction to and reliance on technology. Some possible remedies include allocating time every day to doing exercise or joining a sports team or socially reinforcing group activity such as yoga. There are also potential counters related to new technologies. Many companies are meeting consumer demand with wearable technologies, like the Fitbit or Apple Watch, that track advanced biometric data ranging from heartbeat to quality of sleep. These devices implicitly encourage a more active lifestyle.

In conclusion, technology is at the root of less exercise among city residents and this can be fixed by individuals taking up the burden of improving their own lives. These solutions are advisable since individual responsibility is a habit with myriad benefits.