Ask anyone about the benefits of technology and it probably won’t take them long to rhyme off a list of examples: it helps broaden your knowledge, connect with friends, both new and old, and allows you to see things you’ve never seen before.
But what about the drawbacks? Here’s a major one: increased screen time is hard on your eyes.
In fact, more and more young people are wearing glasses to correct their nearsightedness. This trend has prompted optical health experts to determine if the use of electronic devices such as computers, tablets and smart phones is leading to a deterioration in sight that is reaching epidemic proportions.
High amounts of myopia significantly increases the risk of major ocular health disorders such as retinal tearing (21 times greater), glaucoma (40 times) or cataracts (six times)
Let’s take the example of Pauline — although she could just as easily be a David or a Jason. She is 10 years old and a studious child, doing well in school. Like any young person her age, she loves to use her tablet computer to study or have fun. She’s on it two hours a day, plus weekends.
Pauline may be in for a change, however. She has recently been diagnosed with nearsightedness and her optometrist has strongly recommended that she — and her parents — limit her use of electronic devices and spend more time playing outside.
Pauline isn’t happy. She thinks it’s not fair.
But her case raises the question: what is the link between the use of electronic devices and the appearance of myopia?
Forty per cent of North Americans are affected by myopia. The number of cases doubled between 1972 and 2004 and continues to grow at a rate that qualifies the phenomenon as an epidemic.
In Europe, myopia is prevalent among 42.2 per cent of adults aged 25 to 29 years, almost twice that of adults aged 55 to 59 years.
This suggests there is a real public health issue facing us — and not just the common problem of an error in the refraction of the eye which shows up as blurred vision when looking into the distance.
In fact, high amounts of myopia significantly increases the risk of major ocular health disorders such as retinal tearing (21 times greater), glaucoma (40 times) or cataracts (six times).
An eye that becomes short-sighted becomes longer. The stretching is proportional to the increase in myopia. The more the eye stretches, the more the retina, which lines the inside of the eye, becomes thinner. Symptoms such as cracks, abnormal development of subretinal blood vessels and bleeding may appear.
Ultimately, the very nearsighted patient has a more than 50 per cent risk of spending the rest of his or her life legally blind — in other words living with vision reduced by 60 per cent. This means that the length of their eye exceeds 28 mm (the normal length is 23 mm) or that the myopia levels exceeds six diopters. (Diopters is a unit of measurement used to calculate eyesight — the further away from zero indicates a worsening in vision.) It is important to intervene before this happens to avoid these levels.
(In Canada, legal blindness is defined by a visual acuity of less than 20/200 in the best eye with the help of glasses or contact lenses. A legally blind person therefore sees, at best, 20 times worse than a person with normal
