Slashdot Mirror


Excess Time Indoors May Explain Rising Myopia Rates

Nature reports that an unexpected factor may be behind a growing epidemic of nearsightedness: time spent indoors. From the article: Because the eye grows throughout childhood, myopia generally develops in school-age children and adolescents. About one-fifth of university-aged people in East Asia now have this extreme form of myopia, and half of them are expected to develop irreversible vision loss. This threat has prompted a rise in research to try to understand the causes of the disorder — and scientists are beginning to find answers. They are challenging old ideas that myopia is the domain of the bookish child and are instead coalescing around a new notion: that spending too long indoors is placing children at risk. “We're really trying to give this message now that children need to spend more time outside,” says Kathryn Rose, head of orthoptics at the University of Technology, Sydney.

3 of 144 comments (clear)

  1. Re:A mirror on the wall seems to help by hcs_$reboot · · Score: 3, Funny

    A few years ago I worked at a barn facing a meadow and I got the feeling that it wasn't good for my eyes that they never focussed on anything fewer than a metre away, so I put a wall and I think this has helped my eyes.

    --
    Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
  2. Re:Congratualtion Sherlock by ls671 · · Score: 4, Funny

    Of course I know. When younger, I use to work outside and I had no myopia. Now I am older, I work underground and I have myopia. See? you can't deny scientific facts like that.

    --
    Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
  3. Re:Causation does not imply correlaton! by nukenerd · · Score: 5, Funny

    You have not just spent too much time indoors, it has been in an echo chamber.