At the beginning of the new school year for our students and while you are experiencing fleeting moments from the past and you may be standing in one of those schools in which you studied in your childhood, looking at the innocence around you, you notice something unusual in children and school students, which is that most of them need glasses and at younger ages. Quickly upon inquiry, many of these children had parents who had perfect vision and I was frankly baffled by the low vision of their children!
Myopia is indeed a genetic condition that affected people to see distant objects in a blurry manner. However, its occurrence doubles with the presence of one of the parents with myopia and thus the possibility of the child needing glasses. While the presence of two parents suffering from myopia increases five times the chances of their child being nearsighted!
On the other hand, when you look at the scattered medical studies over the past few years worldwide, you notice that the proportion of adolescents and young people with myopia has jumped from almost a quarter to more than eighty per cent in just over half a century. And here’s my real question-although I don’t have a real study in this context – have the recent pandemic closures made children’s eyesight worse especially since it is impossible to deny the scale of the problem and the speed of change that we have experienced over the past two years.
Perhaps I should highlight this topic because the consequences of this trend are much more serious than the increase in the number of children wearing glasses. Short-sighted eyes become prone to serious problems such as glaucoma and retinal detachment in middle age, conditions that can in turn cause permanent blindness. Here we must be aware that in such cases, the risks may start small for them, but they increase significantly with higher medical effects.
Interestingly, here it seems to me that the reason for such a noticeable deterioration in our vision or the vision of these children is obvious: you just need to look around to see countless children immersed in phones, tablets and laptops. And you won’t be the first to conclude that staring at something inches from your face is detrimental to remote vision. Strangely enough, now our modern life is up close and inside! So we get food by looking closely and staring long at that application to order a meal!
This frankly leads me to wonder: there is something in modern life that destroys our ability to see far away. Although those studies and theories associated with the causes of myopia and which of them were true, what interests me and the conclusion about what is best for children to see and recall is less time bending over screens, and more time in outdoor activities.
True, glasses and prescription lenses, as well as laser surgery, help people with myopia to see better. But none of these reforms may not completely correct the basic anatomical problem of myopia.
In the end, we may not know exactly how screens affect us all day and spend a lot of time indoors, or which causes more harm. Hence, I believe we must promote better vision habits, such as limiting screen time and playing outside. I also urge the Ministry of Education, in coordination with the Ministry of Health, to conduct a survey and research on this topic at the level of the Sultanate’s schools. The sooner you start slowing the progression of myopia in children, the better the result.
Dr. Yousuf Ali Al Mulla is a physician, medical innovator and writer.
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