Rising of myopic children

With increase in screen time, children are suffering more in myopic problem with their eyes. This is pretty much how a day in the life of most school children looks like these days. They are attending school online, turning to screen during their leisure time and even attending extracurricular activities online. What it means is that most of their day is spent on screen - which also means digital eye strain.

Digital eye strain is a reality

Children and even adults have reported increased watering, redness, irritation in the eyes during the pandemic. There is an increase in myopia among children. Since there is less exposure to sunlight, children are coming to us with refractive disorders.

Slowing the damage

Children who are attending classes online clearly have no escape but there are certain things that parents can do to minimise the harm. They need to understand that smaller and brighter screens are bad. They should make the children sit in a bright room, preferably with a desktop or a laptop. Children who are younger than 2 years should avoid screen time altogether. Screen dependence at an early age can lead to development and speech delays. It tends to reduce their attention span and socialising pattern.

It is  recommended to children as well as adults to ensure they have proper lighting coming from behind them while using screen; also their monitors should not have bright light, it should be medium. They should use blue light filters to prevent damage to eyes. He also recommends employees to use bigger fonts to avoid eye strain.

Also, it is extremely important to follow the 20-20-20 rule where every 20 minutes, you take a 20-second break and look 20-feet away for 20 seconds.

Adult children should not be exposed to screen time more than 2.5 hours.

COVID has majorly impacted eyes. People have reported symptoms like conjunctivitis, eye flu due to the infection. The retina team has seen the virus spreading fungal infection inside the eye, leading to significant damage to the retina. 

Proper nourishment

A healthy nutritional diet is very important. Omega 3 fatty acids help greatly in treating dry eyes. Take two teaspoons of flaxseed everyday; fish is also a healthy addition to the diet. Children should have a Vitamin A rich diet and adults should be careful about their Vitamin D and B12 levels - people can focus on eating soya, pulses, green leafy vegetables.

The solution

While it may seem like an easy option to allow screen time to keep the children busy or keep their tantrums down, a lot of us are causing them more harm than we realise. Limiting screen time, ensuring a healthy diet, proper exposure to sunlight and focusing on eye health by making regular eye check appointments are all crucial for your well being and also of your child.