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The Puzzling Rise in Nearsighted Children
- swamp40 11y agoI have always wondered about this phenomenon. It always just seemed unreasonably coincidental that as soon as we started testing children and could prescribe them glasses, there seemed to be an epidemic. Historical documents never seemed to showcase a perpetual 50%+ nearsightedness epidemic.
- sukilot 11y agoKids spening too much time on phones, like Chinese got nearsighted spending too much time doing schoolwork.
- bryanlarsen 11y agoUse your phone or do your schoolwork outside and your eyes will be fine.
- thaumasiotes 11y agoEh, that's not necessarily true. I've tried reading books outside and spent all my time squinting because the glare of the sun on the paper was so bright. It's why I love the grey screen of the original Kindle so much. Want to read it outside? You can do that without going blind! For my phone, though, I can barely see the image on screen if I'm holding it in sunlight. When I've used laptops outside they've had the same problem. LCD screens kind of need to be used in the dark.
- leoc 11y agoNo, apparently not. According to the Nature article http://www.nature.com/news/the-myopia-boom-1.17120 http://www.nature.com/news/the-myopia-boom-1.17120, close work has been ruled out as a major cause of myopia.
- sjm 11y agoRelated article that made the rounds recently: http://www.nature.com/news/the-myopia-boom-1.17120 http://www.nature.com/news/the-myopia-boom-1.17120
- swamp40 11y agoThere are multiple startup ideas in that article.
- leoc 11y agoYes. Trying to fix myopia by getting children exposed to more sunlight is a bit of a "let them eat single-source organic asparagus" response: it makes would-be social reformers feel good, but it's not a realistic way to reliably give all children the (apparently) minimum three daily hours of 10,000 lux. Getting all children outside for three hours every day is not realistically possible, and wouldn't be pleasant or even desirable for all of them: bad weather, unsafe neighbourhoods, air pollution. In areas with often-overcast conditions and/or short winter[ days](EDIT) it wouldn't even be sufficient. Classrooms that admit more natural light would be great, but they're not a realistic means of getting to 3h × 10,000 lux across the board, if only because replacing almost the entire stock of primary-school classrooms would be a slow and expensive process. The most obvious solution is to rig up classrooms with multiple SAD lights, light-meter them to ensure that every desk gets at least 10,000 lux when the system is on, then run the system for maybe four hours every classroom day. (Speaking of which, if I was in charge of a minor child I'd go ahead and stick a SAD lamp in its bedroom and leave it on for most of the day.)
- trhway 11y ago>Getting all children outside for three hours every day is not realistically possible, and wouldn't be pleasant or even desirable for all of them: bad weather, unsafe neighbourhoods, air pollution. i don't understand that. Where do children are supposed to get daily multi-hour physical activity? On the treadmill in the basement? And if children aren't getting such amount of physical activity - that would border on neglect toward their health, physical and emotional. (of course my POV is affected by the fact that i'm a child of 197x-198x when we were "free-range" children back in USSR and from what i heard it was about the same in USA back then)
- rasz_pl 11y agotablets
- nether 11y agoKids should be outside playing, not coding. Adults, too.
- analog31 11y agoCoding is playing. Just kidding, of course. One thing I've noticed is that my kids have vastly more homework than I ever had, and homework now starts in kindergarten. There are only so many waking hours in the day.
- nulltype 11y agoCan kids do homework outside?
- analog31 11y agoPerhaps. It would require providing a place to do it, and good weather. I live in a locale with a pretty hard winter. And schools are increasingly moving schoolwork to the distraction box, er, the computer. Less homework seems like a simpler solution.
- TeMPOraL 11y agoI had a lot of homework as well but at some point I pretty much decided "fuck that, I have better things to do" and learned programming instead. My math grades went down a bit but I actually learned something.
- nextw33k 11y ago
- emailrhoads 11y agoDarwinism dwindling
- i_am_so_tired 11y agoAfter years of staring at screens at work, an optometrist told me I was shortsighted for life and insisted I buy prescription glasses. I then became a landscape gardener for four years. Guess what? My shortsightedness disappeared, as did my hayfever and weak knees. Now I am back in an office (much much better wages) and my shortsightedness is starting to return. So a combination of aggressive diagnosis and lack of eye exercise.
- bryanlarsen 11y agoThe article claims it's the lack of sunlight, not the lack of eye exercise.
- astrange 11y agoLack of sunlight can mean eyestrain, but it also means lack of Vitamin D. Anyone out there giving their kids supplements?
- bryanlarsen 11y agoThe article's theory is that the mechanism is dopamine.
- msarlitt 11y agoIt's true. The human eye simply wasn't meant to stare at and interpret millions of tiny pixels. It causes strain over time, which leads to nearsightedness. Luckily it's (at least) partially reversable, as you experienced.
- bryanlarsen 11y agoThe article presents evidence contradicting the strain hypothesis, and presents the sunlight hypothesis instead.