New Study Finds That Lockdowns Have Caused Vision Problems From Staring At Screens

The following report is from Study Finds:

As most children start their summer vacations, many parents are busy booking their back-to-school doctor’s checkups. Unfortunately, the last year has been anything but ordinary when it comes to health. Even if youngsters avoided COVID-19 while staying in quarantine and remote learning, a recent study reveals bad news for those upcoming visits to the eye doctor. Researchers say the combination of home confinement and too much time looking at digital screens appears to be severely impacting kids’ vision.

The international team from the United States and China finds the rates of myopia, or near-sightedness, among young children is three times higher during the pandemic than in the previous five years. Researchers examined over 123,000 children between six and 13 years-old during the global health emergency. Results reveal a “substantial” uptick in near-sighted cases among children between six and eight years-old.

Myopia is a major health issue around the world. The World Health Organization estimates that half of the population of the world may be myopic by 2050.
Says a report published in the JAMA Ophthalmology

So What Causes Our Eyes To Become Near-Sighted?

Study authors say they’re finding more and more evidence in recent years that spending less time outdoors can lead to someone’s eyes becoming myopic. Additionally, the amount of time and intensity of work, especially involving digital screens, also plays a role in declining vision.

Previous studies point to the growing use of smartphones, computers, and other digital devices as playing a central part in failing eye health, especially among children. Even before the pandemic and the switch to remote learning, one report discovered the rate of teens needing glasses nearly doubled from 2012 to 2018.

Eye Problems Skyrocketed During Quarantine

Researchers in China actually started this study back in 2015, using photoscreenings to examine students’ eyes at the start of each school year in September. The team conducted 2020’s exams in June, after schools reopened in the country following a five-month lockdown.

Due to COVID-19 in 2020, the school-aged children were confined to their homes from January to May, and online courses were offered. For the screened population, their daily online course hours for grades 1 and 2 is 1 hour and the time for grades 3 to 6 is 2.5 hours. Children’s indoor activities and screen time therefore increased and their outdoor activities were decreased, often to none.
The researchers said

The results uncovered a stunning spike in near-sightedness among the youngest children in the study. From 2015 through 2019, researchers only diagnosed 5.7% of six-year-olds with myopia by 2019. The 2020 findings show 21.5% of six-year-olds are now myopic. Moreover, 26.2% of seven-year-olds and 37.2% of eight-year-olds also displayed poorer vision.

Study authors do note most of the increased cases of near-sightedness were mild. Also, nine-year-olds had the highest rate of myopia (45.3%) however, this rate only increased by two percent from 2018.

Concerns have been raised about whether home confinement may worsen the burden of myopia. To our knowledge, we provide the first evidence that the concern may be justified.
The researchers

What Can Parents Do To Protect Their Children’s Vision?

Although vaccinations are helping to reopen nations across the global, health officials continue to warn of the threat of COVID mutations which could start lockdowns all over again. With that in mind, researchers say parents need to control screen time “as much as possible” and get their kids back outdoors.

This substantial myopic shift was not seen in any other year-to-year comparison, making the cause possibly due to the unusual occurrence of home confinement in 2020.

The team adds the results do not show the same level of declining eye health among children between nine and 13.

These findings led us to a hypothesis that younger children are more sensitive to the environmental change than older children.

AUTHOR COMMENTARY

Beloved, I wish above all things that thou mayest prosper and be in health, even as thy soul prospereth.
3 John 2

We noted in our comprehensive document on Covid, “Facts Are Facts: Learn The Data Surrounding Covid-19,” that the draconian lockdowns (in the words of Fauci himself) have lead to all kinds detrimental effects on children – which will only increase as the world continues to shift all focus to a screen, and with yet another wave of strict lockdowns coming when the mass kill-off of vaccine recipients occurs.

It should also be noted that the DQ Institute, the WEF and OECD-backed organization, will be implementing a coming test for people to be able to use the internet post-grid-down situation – which, many of the standards include managing screen time.

[7] Who goeth a warfare any time at his own charges? who planteth a vineyard, and eateth not of the fruit thereof? or who feedeth a flock, and eateth not of the milk of the flock? [8] Say I these things as a man? or saith not the law the same also? [9] For it is written in the law of Moses, Thou shalt not muzzle the mouth of the ox that treadeth out the corn. Doth God take care for oxen? [10] Or saith he it altogether for our sakes? For our sakes, no doubt, this is written: that he that ploweth should plow in hope; and that he that thresheth in hope should be partaker of his hope. (1 Corinthians 9:7-10).

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