Irrespective of the levels of physical activity undertaken, greater sedentary time is a major risk factor for obesity, cardiovascular disease and mortality.
Co-researcher Dale Bond from The Miriam Hospital, Rhode Island, in the US said,.
"Almost everyone knows that physical activity is important. But it's not widely recognised that someone who runs five miles in the evening but spends the rest of the day sitting at a desk can be putting their health at risk."
He added, "That smartphone you use so often throughout the day could now actually help to improve your health."
Bond collaborated with his team members to design the smartphone app "B-mobile" which intervenes with a person's sedentary behavior by producing short-term reductions in time spent by obese people sitting idle or reclining while awake.
The app was primarily tested on a group of obese middle-aged women, although the smartphone-based intervention is applicable also to people who are not obese.
The automated app recorded the sedentary time of participants, and after a prolonged period of inactivity alerted participants through voice messages to cheer up and move around.
Researchers adopted three distinct approaches to find out which one of them proved to be the most effective in reducing the sedentary behavior of participants.
They discovered that taking shorter breaks more often proved to be the best approach of all.
"Prompting frequent, short activity breaks may be the most effective way to decrease excessive sedentary time and increase physical activity in individuals who are overweight or obese," Bond claimed.
The findings were published in the journal PLOS ONE.