A myopia epidemic is sweeping the globe. Here’s how to stop it

Elie Dolgin • May 29, 2024

Time spent outdoors is the best defence against rising rates of short-sightedness, but scientists are searching for other ways to reverse the troubling trend.

The COVID-19 pandemic didn’t just reshape how children learn and see the world. It transformed the shape of their eyeballs.

As real-life classrooms and playgrounds gave way to virtual meetings and digital devices, the time that children spent focusing on screens and other nearby objects surged — and the time they spent outdoors dropped precipitously. This shift led to a notable change in children’s anatomy: their eyeballs lengthened to better accommodate short-vision tasks.

Study after study, in regions ranging from Europe to Asia, documented this change. One analysis from Hong Kong even reported a near doubling in the incidence of pathologically stretched eyeballs among six-year-olds compared with pre-pandemic levels.


Continue reading at Nature.

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