While children spend more time entertaining themselves under lockdown – staring at movies, TV shows, and video games – they are straining their eyes. As a result, short-sightedness and other vision problems are skyrocketing among children. With this in mind, doctors and scientists have kept a close watch for long-term health implications on kids growing up during quarantine.
Unfortunately, they ended up finding one — a new study looked at two groups of children aged six to eight in Hong Kong and found that they were developing myopia, also called short-sightedness, at about 2.5 times the rate as before the pandemic began.
The study, published in July in the British Journal of Ophthalmology, is the latest to suggest that lockdowns and other restrictions may be taking a toll on children’s eyesight. In January, data from more than 120,000 children of a similar age in Feicheng, China, suggested a threefold surge in the prevalence of myopia in 2020.
Dr. Jason Yam from the Chinese University of Hong Kong and a co-author of the new study said:
In Hong Kong, schools were closed for months, and even recreational facilities such as playgrounds, sports grounds, and even outdoor campsites and country parks were shut. So naturally, more time was spent on reading, watching television, or using computers, smartphones, or other digital devices.
Myopia isn’t the end of the world; it is a common vision condition. Those who have it will see near objects clearly, but farther objects will become blurry. However, Yam warns that it can lead to more severe health problems later on.
Yam explained:
Our study showed that less time spent outdoors and more time spent on near work, including screen time, is associated with faster progression in short-sightedness, or myopia. It sounds like an innocuous condition but can actually predispose one to multiple ocular complications and increase the risk of irreversible vision loss later in life.
According to the Guardian, Prof. James Wolffsohn, from Aston University, who wasn’t involved in the study, claims that at least nine studies so far had identified an increase in myopia progression during quarantine. However, one of these studies suggested that this development was partially reversed after lockdown.
