Yes, childhood obesity has risen sharply over the past three decades and continues to climb. Among children and adolescents aged 5 to 19, the global rate of overweight (including obesity) jumped from 8% in 1990 to 20% in 2022. Obesity alone quadrupled during that same window, going from 2% to 8%, meaning over 160 million young people worldwide now live with obesity.
How Much the Numbers Have Grown
The scale of the increase is hard to overstate. In 1990, roughly 31 million children and adolescents aged 5 to 19 had obesity. By 2022, that figure exceeded 160 million. Among children under five, 35 million were classified as overweight in 2024. In Africa specifically, the number of overweight children under five has increased by nearly 12% since 2000.
In the United States, the picture is consistent with the global trend. From 2017 to early 2020, 19.7% of children and adolescents aged 2 to 19 had obesity. The rates climb with age: 12.7% among 2- to 5-year-olds, 20.7% among 6- to 11-year-olds, and 22.2% among adolescents 12 to 19. That means roughly one in five American teens is living with obesity, not just overweight but clinically obese.
What’s Driving the Rise
Two forces stand out in the research: changes in what children eat and how they spend their time.
Ultra-processed foods now dominate young people’s diets in the U.S. Between 1999 and 2018, the share of calories coming from ultra-processed foods in children’s diets rose from about 61% to 67%. The most dramatic shift was in ready-to-heat and ready-to-eat meals, which went from supplying 2% of daily calories to 11% over that period. Sweets and sweet snacks also increased, from about 10% of daily calories to nearly 13%. These foods tend to be calorie-dense and easy to overconsume, and prior research has linked them to weight gain, diabetes, and other metabolic problems.
Sedentary screen time plays a reinforcing role. The WHO recommends that preschool children spend less than one hour per day on screens, yet studies have found that more than half of preschoolers already exceed that threshold. Each additional hour of daily screen time is associated with roughly a 22% higher likelihood of being overweight. Older children typically log even more screen hours, compounding the risk as they age.
Income Plays a Significant Role
Childhood obesity does not affect all families equally. Data from a U.S. longitudinal study found that among 14-year-old girls, 20% of those in the lowest family income group were obese compared with just 6% in the highest income group. Boys showed a similar pattern. The gap between low- and high-income children widens as kids get older, suggesting that the environments surrounding lower-income families, including reduced access to fresh food, fewer safe spaces for physical activity, and greater reliance on cheaper processed options, accumulate over time.
What the Pandemic Did to Kids’ Weight
The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated weight gain in children worldwide as schools closed, organized sports shut down, and screen time surged. A Swedish study tracking children’s BMI trajectories found that the pandemic produced a small but measurable increase in body weight, peaking about two years after the pandemic began. After that peak, BMI started trending back toward pre-pandemic levels. Sweden’s effect was smaller than what international studies reported, likely because its restrictions were less strict. Countries with longer school closures and stricter lockdowns saw larger jumps in childhood weight gain.
How Childhood Obesity Is Defined
Because children’s bodies are still growing, obesity isn’t diagnosed the same way it is in adults. Instead of a single BMI number, doctors use BMI-for-age charts that compare a child’s BMI to others of the same age and sex. The WHO defines overweight in children aged 5 to 19 as a BMI more than one standard deviation above the median, and obesity as more than two standard deviations above. In practical terms, those thresholds align with the adult BMI cutoffs of 25 and 30 by age 19.
How Treatment Is Changing
For decades, the standard advice for childhood obesity centered almost entirely on diet and exercise. That changed in early 2023 when the American Academy of Pediatrics released updated clinical guidelines recommending that doctors offer obesity medications to adolescents aged 12 and older as an addition to lifestyle changes like improved nutrition and physical activity. This was a notable shift, reflecting growing evidence that behavioral changes alone are often not enough for children with established obesity. The medications referenced include the same class of drugs (GLP-1 receptor agonists) that have gained attention for adult weight loss, now formally endorsed for use in eligible adolescents alongside sustained habit changes.
Prescriptions for these medications among adolescents have been rising since the guidelines came out, though they remain a small fraction of overall treatment. The emphasis in pediatric care is still on building healthier routines early, reducing processed food intake, increasing physical activity, and creating home environments that support those habits over the long term.