In 2007, Donald Mutti and his colleagues at the Ohio State University College of Optometry in Columbus reported the results of a study that tracked more than 500 eight- and nine-year-olds in California who started out with healthy vision6. The team examined how the children spent their days, and “sort of as an afterthought at the time, we asked about sports and outdoorsy stuff”, says Mutti.

    It was a good thing they did. After five years, one in five of the children had developed myopia, and the only environmental factor that was strongly associated with risk was time spent outdoors6.

I have spent years staring at a CRT screen as a kid only a few inches from my face and not going outside much. Always had a hunch that my short-sightedness was related to that.

b_b:

I thought that this was an article about politics, based on the title. Pleasantly surprised to learn that they meant it literally.

I have a very young son, and it has been my plan to try to keep him away from screens, but I have to confess that I don't really know how. We run so much of our house through our phones (lights, stereo, shopping, etc) that it's inevitable that I pull out my phone pretty often while I'm with him. I'm sure I'm inadvertently desensitizing him. I could do a better job, but it feels sort of inevitable that kids are going to be screen exposed way sooner than we'd all like.


posted 2180 days ago