Its a very well studied dataset in (graduate) Stats. So many contingency tables where you correlate onset of myopia - myopia vs Asian/non-Asian, myopia verus Male/Female, with/without computer, w/wo smartphone, w/wo outdoor time, w/wo myopic parents, on & on.
If you know how to run a ChiSq, you can look at some 2x2 tables here. You can convince yourself with 1 line of R.
But honestly, there's a ton of data on this subject. Conclusion is mostly the same - if you spend more time outside, less likely to be myopic. That's the one factor you can control. The others (being Asian or male or having myopic parents etc) is luck of the draw.
The other side of this problem is that more than one billion people around the world can't afford glasses.
"More than a billion people around the world need eyeglasses but don’t have them, researchers say, an affliction long overlooked on lists of public health priorities. Some estimates put that figure closer to 2.5 billion people. They include thousands of nearsighted Nigerian truck drivers who strain to see pedestrians darting across the road and middle-aged coffee farmers in Bolivia whose inability to see objects up close makes it hard to spot ripe beans for harvest. Then there are the tens of millions of children like Shivam across the world whose families cannot afford an eye exam or the prescription eyeglasses that would help them excel in school."
VisionSpring, a social venture, provides people glasses - which they say costs them $4-5 each. They claim that uncorrected refractive error costs the global economy an estimated $227 billion a year.
https://visionspring.org/why-eyeglasses
Do we know if that myopia is caused while in prison, or if it is just picked up while they are in prison. Because it would be very unusual to see myopic changes from emmetropization (eye remodeling) occurring in adults.
So some background information is necessary to get everyone on the same page. The optics of the eye are such that the lens and cornea focus light onto the back of the eye, the retina. That focusing power can be inadequate or overpowered depending on the axial length of the eye. You can imagine that you would need a diverging lens to help focus light better in a longer (myopic, or near-sighted) eye, and a converging light to help focus light better in a shorter (hyperopic, or far-sighted) eye.
We know from several large scale studies that eye reaches its maximum axial length by around age 13, and while the eye gets ever so slightly shorter (hyperopic, rather than myopic) as you age, it's far outweighed by the effects of presbyopia, whereby the lens of your eye becomes less elastic with age, and thus is unable to focus up close. In effect, it makes you more farsighted, and why people with myopia feel that their vision somewhat improves with age.
This is a real issue in South Korea and many other Asian countries, where it's prevalent.
In these countries, having a "fair/light" skin signifies social prestige. Which is why most parents do not let their children go out to play and explore while the sun is out.
This mentality is primarily rooted from imperial times, where tan skin was associated with lower-class field or farm work. I personally experienced this, growing up in SE Asia. The population is also bombarded with ads for skin whitening soaps, creams, lotions, and even glutathione iv treatments.
It's a multibillion-dollar skin-whitening market in China, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand and South Korea.
More on the subject:
The high prevalence of myopia in Korean children with influence of parental refractive errors:
In northern Europe it's the exact opposite. Youths go out of their way to get tanned skin as is signifies social prestige on Instagram and IRL, as in you can afford to go often on vacations in sunny places year round as opposed to the poor wage slaves who are at their desks most of the year.
I see the preference to whiter skin in India as well in a very big way. There are lot of ads for creams promising to make the ladies fairer and hence be more likable by a guy. If this is not racist I don’t know what is. The darker skin you have, you are less worthy. Parents discourage the kids not to get dark by playing under the hot son. It’s sad.
I had 2020 vision till 2012 (39 years old then). I am convinced that my myopia onset was perceptibly accelerated with the purchase of my first "smart phone". And the constant use of it: Whatsapp & twitter.
Your eyes change shape as you age -- they get more "leathery". In my case, I had myopia from about 16 until I was 40, although I stopped wearing glasses a few years before I hit 40 because I found that I didn't really need them. My eyes are "rounder" now than they were when I was 16, and it will eventually go the other way and I will need bifocals / reading glasses.
Your body changes a lot around the 40 year mark and I don't think that it's related, at all, to your smart phone. I'm sure that those older than us can tell us what to expect in the next decade.
I'm not sure if scleral remodeling the reason. My understanding was that the lens part of your eye became less elastic as you aged, you can't focus as near, and you became more farsighted as a result - a phenomenon called presbyopia. Thus, if you were nearsighted before, you'd be closer to regular vision or maybe even a little farsighted, needing reading glasses to focus closer up.
Is there any proof/research that it is because of smartphones (screens?)? My anecdote; I have had myopia since I was 7 (I am 45 now), 1 year before my first computer. Since then I have spent most my waking life behind screens and my myopia has been getting less slowly since my first glasses. I now can see quite well without glasses which I could not do 15+ years ago. Also, I should be up for reading glasses soon, but I can read the tiniest fonts on the tiniest screens without reading glasses (I need my normal glasses for that though), which gives me a lot of real estate on small devices (for instance working on a 4k remote desktop on my iPad pro 10inch; of course it does not show the entire desktop at once (you scroll which makes it really a nice kind of 'virtual desktop' system for me) but for me it's comfortable to read while other people cannot even see what i'm doing as the fonts are really minuscule). My eyes don't get tired though and never have on screens, even when screens where crappy flickering low res CRT things (huge fonts of course, compared to what I use now).
Maybe the spending time outside is more related to it as this article says; I work almost exclusively outside. I abhor cold so I only spend my days in warm climes where I work outside behind my computer/phone/tablet/... for the entire day. When I have meetings, I try to get people to meet outside, which usually works (most people like this far more than staying inside, even if it's chilly, but not with freeze/rain/snow of course).
Pre smartphone days(1997) but when I was in college I had to get glasses to see the whiteboard at the end of the first year spent looking at monitors and a drafting board for large periods of the day.
I spent my summers lifeguarding on a beach so three months off staring hard into the distance from 10am to 7pm 6 days a week with hardly any screen time.
When returning to college in September I could see the board without glasses for the first 2-3 months but then would revert to needing glasses.
This cycle repeated itself for several years but the time reverting to glasses got shorter each year.
Sample size of 1, YMMV
Fascinating story, and I love the implication that you were lifeguarding without glasses. I know from personal experience that bright sunlight improves visual acuity (bright images, pupil constriction, and squinting all help), so obviously you were able to do your job, but the mental image is pretty funny!
I actually never though of that and had a good laugh reading your comment.
I had to pass a medical with an eye test for the job so I presume I was safe.
Eyesight is a complicated thing, I have one eye much worse than the other, can read the monitor fine with my right eye and not at all with my left eye.
I can use a monitor OK for an hour or two with no glasses but after that I get a headache.
My right eye defiantly compensates for my left.
> I now can see quite well without glasses which I could not do 15+ years ago.
This happened to me at 40. The eye doctor explained that human eyes get thicker and more leathery as we age, which changes their shape. So if you're myopic before this time, you have a decent chance of having improved vision. It eventually goes the other way, though, and reading glasses or bifocals are needed to correct your vision.
I'm 31 and I had perfect vision just 3 or so years ago. I got my first smart phone 6 years ago and I too wonder if I would have better vision today if I had used it less. And right now I'm wondering if I should create a regiment of "looking outside" for an hour every day at work. Maybe that would help at least stop things from getting worse.
Be careful - the study clearly states that what's important to keep a good vision is exposure to (supposedly natural?) bright light. There's no real link between too much screen-time and a decline of it as the article states.
I gather that screen time is a contributing factor only because when you are staring at a screen you probably are not doing it outside in bright sunlight.
I definitely notice my vision getting worse when I use my phone for a while. Especially long or mid distance view suffers. It takes a few minutes to hours to get back to normal. Laptop screens have much less of this effect.
Aldous Huxley swore by the Bates Method (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Art_of_Seeing). I went through a period where I tried it and it did seem to help, but YMMV, not scientifically-proven, etc. etc.
I will say that the people with the best eyes I know (one was a fighter pilot, and still has great eyesight into his 70s) spent a lot of time outside tromping through the woods and read a lot -- so had a habit of switching back and forth between close-reading and far-gazing.
Whether it helps or not (and I believe it does, when I forget for a few days, my glasses seem too weak), it isn't the worst idea to look up from the phone or laptop and focus faraway a few times an hour.
I don't know if you can fix presbyopia, though...I think that's something that just happens like clockwork at 40. :/
My wife got lasik 7 years back in her early 20s. Now she just got diagnosed with astigmatism when she was complaining of vision issues. She is back to wearing glasses for some part of the day. Lasik can certainly help the OP but not guaranteed. It's weird how our eyes change shape as we age.
You can try a yogic practice (Trataka – Still Gazing).
>>> Many years ago, someone who used to work for me was struggling with poor memory. He wanted to be alert and disciplined but it was almost like laziness was a disease and he was suffering from it. Not in the physical sense because he was out and about working on stuff all the time but there was no productivity, focus or any significant output. We (him and I) figured he severely lacked focus.
I told him to practice trataka for three months every day. It would help him with his memory and focus. He followed the instructions diligently and at the end of three months, there was remarkable improvement in his memory and recall. But, memory improvement wasn’t the main thing. As a result of the practice, another, totally
unexpected, thing happened. He reported a blurred vision in spite of wearing spectacles. He went to the optometrist only to find out that he no longer needed the prescription glasses (for short-sightedness or myopia). He had been wearing glasses for more than a decade.
I’ve observed on numerous occasions that yogic practices do channelize the flow of various energies in the body. It changes your gaze, gait and movements. It even affects your speech in its own positive way. You slow down a bit but become more effective, more mindful.
An unfailing sign of a true yogi is stillness of the gaze. Even some advanced meditators struggle to keep their eyeballs still (even when their eyes are closed). Stillness of the gaze has a remarkable effect on the energy flow in your body.
There is a specific yogic practice to perfect your gaze. The method of fixing your gaze on an object is called trāṭaka.
Movement in the eyes, flickering of the eyelids represent a subtle flaw in your posture as well as meditation. Practice of trataka is the best practice to eliminate this flaw. Like all other yogic practices, do it every day for at least 40 days to benefit from it.
I've needed glasses for myopia since my early teens. As the inevitable decline in eye focusing ability set in (I'm now 52), I've taken to keeping a pair of glasses with weakened prescription (-1, 1.25, 1.5 diopter all seem to work equally well, just affects posture i.e. ideal distance to screen) near every computer workstation I use. With cheap mail-order outfits like Zenni cost is not an issue.
With these on, my eyes' comfortable (and nearly only remaining) "infinity focus" is used to work at a computer. One wonders, if myopia is, in fact, caused by long-term eye strain from excessive near focus time during developing years, whether a disciplined approach of using normal reading glasses designed for older folks, while doing all paper/computer work, might help against developing myopia.
I'm aware of bifocals and contact lenses/laser surgery (with these, ordinary cheap reading glasses would suffice) but I've always been most comfortable just wearing normal eyeglasses, so switching to weakened glasses as necessary works for me.
I believe it. While I was in university, my eyes strained a lot to the point where they'd start to tear uncontrollably for days on end, I'd get headaches and my vision literally got worse. But every summer I'd spend weeks on end outdoors, camping, hiking, etc... It got better, all the eye strain went away. My mother used to have 20/20 vision, until a decade into her career as an accountant (it could have been age, but eye problems aren't prevalent in her family).
That's part of the reason I decided to do something outside of my degree path (that and the fact economics is depressing AF). I still enjoy computers, economics, all the things I studied, but working with my hands, stints in the outdoors, not staring at a screen makes me happier (and healthier).
Since I started walking our dog everyday on the beach, for health reasons, I’ve noticed a definite improvement in my eyesight, I still don’t need glasses age 56. I also remember when when I had a job in London that required commuting on the tube my eyesight deteriorated quickly, when I switched jobs and drove to work, it got better again, driving gives your eyes a good workout because one constantly switches focus between far and close objects.
I moved to a ground floor place, and basically get no direct light. Sort of a shock after years of a sunny place.
I have some studio lights around for recording. Would these benefit the eye the way the sun does? I had considered using them while working for seasonal affective disorder.
It's hard to be sure but my eyes feel a little weaker since moving in.
I had a similar situation and did notice a positive improvement after getting a super bright (5000 lumen) light. Could have been coincidence but I was pleasantly surprised when my prescription decreased in strength.
I assumed using it at night would mess up my sleep, but it didn't.
Isn't myopia beneficial? When eyes get adapted to screens, books maybe it's bettter? I can see every single pixel on screens and it's very useful in daily life. Far sight is useful only rarely - when driving, and when hiking in mountains. And near sight worsens with age, maybe previous myopia slightly prevents that.
Thanks for reminding me about myopia, I will get glasses (if anything, just for mountain views). One time I tried someone else's glasses and it was wonderful, completely different world when being outside, extremely sharp, not blurry.
I have -5.50D and to be honest, whilst my vision is pretty poor I can definitely tell that, when not wearing glasses, my close-up vision is better. Not that it's actually helpful.
If you are young and able to focus anywhere, then I guess that's better.
But possibly there is myopia and presbyopia (age related farsightedness) interaction.
"Many people with near-sightedness can read comfortably without eyeglasses or contact lenses even after age forty."
"Presbyopia is the result of age-related hardening of the natural lens. Everybody has this happen and it gets bad enough we can’t ignore the resulting near vision problem by about age 45.
The one good thing about being near-sighted is that the large eyeball means the default focal point of the myopic Eye is up close, depending on how nearsighted you are. So if myopic, without glasses you can see up close without needing to work at it."
I do an exercise each day where I try to (for at least 10 minutes) look at very distant objects like the horizon or a tree in the distance. I do this because it relaxes the eye especially if you work with screens all day (which I do).
"Increased risk of wetness linked to reduced distance from water, studies suggest."
Human bodies autocalibrate for their environment to a remarkable degree on virtually every axis, moreso during childhood and adolescence and to a lesser degree after reaching maturity. I can't fathom why anyone would doubt that spending all of your time staring at nearby objects causes your eyes to adapt to staring at nearby objects.
I'm not talking about the near-work hypothesis (ie. "too much close work causes myopia"), but the related idea that "not enough far work causes myopia."
And this perfectly fits the article's findings.
Anecdotally, a few of my friends are into sailing, in a 'crewing a large sailing ship' sense, and apparently some have seen noticeable improvements to their myopia after being out at sea for a couple of weeks and spending a lot of time staring at the horizon.
If you know how to run a ChiSq, you can look at some 2x2 tables here. You can convince yourself with 1 line of R.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1771677/
Or if you want someone else to run the analysis & just skip to the interpretation of results, try this - http://astro1.panet.utoledo.edu/~terencezl/projects/myopia.h...
But honestly, there's a ton of data on this subject. Conclusion is mostly the same - if you spend more time outside, less likely to be myopic. That's the one factor you can control. The others (being Asian or male or having myopic parents etc) is luck of the draw.