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In the pandemic era, Zoom classes, mask profiteering and virtual meetings have become the harsh reality. The COVID-19 epidemic posed a complex set of issues for everyone, especially children and adolescents, with mental health implications. But the harmful effects did not stop there. A new study has found that in Covid restrictions, children may spend more time indoors and on screens, which could lead to an increase in the rate of short-sightedness, also known as myopia.
There's no doubt that the digital age has completely changed the way we live our lives. Children and adolescents spend a lot of time watching screens, which can be extremely harmful to them. But the situation exacerbated when children were involuntarily had to spend time stuck inside their homes. More screen time led to more serious problems such as myopia.
Shortsightedness or myopia is a vision problem in which items close to you are plainly seen but objects further away are blurry. It occurs in a child when the eyeball of the child is too long from front to back. It is caused when the cornea, the transparent window at the front of the eye, is bent steeply. The rays of light that penetrate your child's eye narrowly miss the retina, the light-sensitive tissue at the back of the eye. This causes distant items to become hazy and close objects to become distinct.
If ignored, shortsightedness can lead to complications that may increase the risk of irreversible impaired eyesight/blindness later in life, said researchers of the study conducted at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.
For the study, researchers studied the eyes of 1,793 children to see if the pandemic's forced behavioural and lifestyle changes had an impact on children's vision. The findings suggest that children in the Covid-19 group had a greater rate of new incidences of short-sightedness. As per the study results, one in five (19.5%) of the children in the Covid group developed myopia between January and August 2020, as compared to about 1 in 3 (37%) of the children in the pre-Covid-19 group over three years.
For 6, 7, and 8-year-olds in the Covid-19 group, the projected 1-year incidence of short-sightedness was 28 per cent, 27 per cent, and 26 per cent, respectively, compared to 17 per cent, 16 per cent, and 15 per cent, respectively, in the pre-Covid-19 group. These changes were accompanied by a decrease in outdoor time from roughly an hour and 15 minutes to around 24 minutes per day, as well as an increase in screen time from around 2.5 hours to around 7 hours per day.
However, the limitation of the study cannot be ignored. Researchers said that since this is an observational study, it is unable to determine causality. Also, the study contained questionnaire data, which rely on memory. The researchers emphasised that the data might not reflect the impact of Covid-19 in other parts of the world, where social isolation, quarantine, and school closure policies may differ.
Increased screen time is a cause of concern for kids as it can lead to the development of many diseases. So, it is crucial that parents take appropriate measures to mitigate the risk of developing eye diseases such as myopia. Parents should: