THE old wives tale that excessive screen time can give you square eyes may contain some truth, after a new study found it could increase kids’ risk of an eye condition.
Just an hour spent in front of screens increases children‘s risk of myopia by 21 per cent, the research found.
Using screens between one and four hours was found to significantly increase the risk of myopia[/caption]
Myopia, the medical term for short sightedness, is when a person can’t see objects far away clearly.
The study, carried out by a team at Seoul National University College of Medicine, South Korea, pulled together 45 studies involving 300,000 kids.
They found the risk of myopia increased significantly between one to four hours of daily screen time, and then rose more gradually after four hours.
The widespread adoption of smart devices among children was said by the researchers to have an influence.
They wrote: “Global smartphone penetration surged from 21.6 per cent in 2014 to 69 per cent in 2023.
“Additionally, the age at which children begin using smart devices is decreasing, with many two-year-olds spending up to two hours daily on such devices.
“As a quintessential form of near-vision work, the use of smart devices has been considered to have a significant association with increased risk of myopia.”
Studies over the last decade have shown myopia to be a growing problem, particularly among children.
A study published in 2016 found children are twice as likely to be short-sighted than 50 years prior.
Scientists at Ulster University tracked more than 1,000 children over six years, and compared it to results from similar studies in the 1960s.
Writing in the journal PLOS One, they said: “The proportion of myopes in the UK has more than doubled over the last 50 years in children aged between ten and 16 years, and children are becoming myopic at a younger age.”
At the time the study was published, the researchers found myopia was most likely to develop between the ages of six and 13 years.
Also, that 16.4 per cent of children aged 12 to 13 were short sighted – more than double the rate of 7.2 per cent of those aged 10 to 16 in the 1960s.
The new Korean study specifically looked at how much screen time increased the risk of myopia among kids.
While the risk increased significantly between one to four hours, the association remained insignificant for screen time exposure of up to one hour per day, suggesting a potential safety threshold.
The researchers wrote: “These findings could offer meaningful insights for future research and inform educational strategies and
public health policies aimed at addressing the myopia pandemic.”
Using screens for up to one hour a day was seen as a potential safety threshold[/caption]
Signs of myopia
Short-sightedness usually starts in children from age 6 to 13, according to the NHS, but it can also happen in adults.
Signs include:
- difficulty reading words from a distance, such as reading the whiteboard at school
- sitting close to the TV or computer, or holding a mobile phone or tablet close to the face
- getting headaches
- rubbing the eyes a lot
Visit an optician if you or your child has signs of short sightedness, or you or your child hasn’t had an eye test for two years.
Short-sightedness is usually treated with glasses or contact lenses.
How to stop short-sightedness getting worse
IT’S not clear why short-sightedness happens and it’s hard to prevent it.
But there are some things that can help stop it getting worse.
These include:
- spending more time outdoors (especially children)
- wearing bi-focal or multi-focal contact lenses
Source: NHS
