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A quarter of teens globally engage in basically no physical activity—not even an hour of exercise a week—the World Health Organization said Wednesday, warning that this significantly raises health risks.

The WHO's new global estimates found that when asked, one in four adolescents aged 11 to 17 report no active days—defined as at least 60 minutes of moderate to vigorous physical activity—in the previous week.

The study, published in The Lancet Global Health, draws on hundreds of population-based surveys from 140 countries and territories, involving more than 3.2 million teens, WHO said.

When extrapolated, the findings amount to some 240 million young people with no active days in the span of a week, the United Nations health agency said.

Overall, adolescents partaking in the studies on average reported being active for 2.7 days a week, while only 14% reported being active on all seven days, the estimates showed.

The WHO warned that "physical inactivity is a major risk factor for heart disease, type 2 diabetes and some cancers."

"Helping young people develop active habits early in life is critical to protecting their health and reducing the global burden of these diseases," it said in a statement.

The organization lamented the lack of progress, with physical activity among adolescents remaining "virtually unchanged" in the past 15 years, urging societies to step up.

"For 15 years, the world has made almost no progress in getting young people moving, and girls are being left furthest behind," WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in the statement.

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