Optometrist warns kids becoming shortsighted earlier due to time spent on screens
A Sydney optometrist is warning parents that young kids are suffering irreversible damage to their eyes because of the amount of time they’re spending on screens.
Manly
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A Sydney optometrist says children are becoming shortsighted at an increasingly young age due to the amount of time they spend looking at screens.
Jenny Chiang an optometrist at Specsavers at Warriewood, on Sydney’s northern beaches said she was seeing an increasing number of children developing myopia – or becoming shortsighted – at an ever earlier age.
She said traditionally children can start developing myopia in their early teens.
But now she was seeing kids as young as seven with deteriorating sight.
“My observations are that myopia is happening at a younger age,” Ms Chiang said.
“Normally when kids are on screens like phones and computers, there is a lot of near vision work that is often indoors without natural light.
“Staring at screens and being indoors for extended periods of time can increase the risk of myopia or becoming shortsighted.
“This means the eyes focus well only on close objects, while more distant objects appear blurred. Children are more at risk of this, as their eyes are still developing.”
The latest research shows kids in NSW are spending more than double the amount of time indoors on screens than the World Health Organisation recommendation.
The research reports that children across the state spend an average of 2.6 hours on screens each day, with 14 per cent, spending more than four hours.
The findings were uncovered by Specsavers optometrists as part of a research project designed to better understand screen use among children and parental understanding of their child’s eye health.
“The biggest message I would like to get across to parents is to make sure their children spend time outside playing and if parents are worried about the impacts of screen time on their child’s eye health, the best thing to do is to book in to see an optometrist for an eye test,” Chiang said.