When you think of countries in terms of laziness, you normally think of fat obese Americans driving in their cars everywhere and not doing any exercise – this isn’t anywhere near the truth though according to a new study.

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It turns out that the laziest country is in fact Indonesia, with their inhabitants walking on average 3513 steps a day. On the reverse end of the poll, Hong Kong was found to be the most active country with 6,880 steps per day.

The study was conducted by researchers from Stanford University who tracked the data from 717,000 smartphone users from 111 countries in the world. The UK actually ranked fairly decently with an average of 5444 steps a day. Bioengineer Scott Delp said the following:

There isn’t a simple link between obesity levels and the average number of steps in a country – it’s more concerned with the ‘activity inequality’ in a country.

If you think about some people in a country as ‘activity rich’ and others as ‘activity poor’, the size of the gap between them is a strong indicator of obesity levels in that society.

For example, in the US there is an average of 4774 steps a day, but a large divide between the fittest people and laziest people and a strong level of obesity in that country.

It’s thought that this is all down to the design of the city – a place like New York is more pedestrian friendly, leading to a higher step count and less obesity whereas more rural cities encourage the opposite.

This could have an effect on future town planning and more areas promoting physical activity.

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All makes perfect sense. Glad to see that the UK is doing well up there as well, considering most people think we’re pretty lazy. No way.

For more laziness, check out the link between lazy messy stoners staying up late and IQ levels. It’ll surprise you.