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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.
But NOT going outside increases your risks of bone deformity from vitamin D deficiency, and now also increased incidence of myopia.
However, the REAL problem is that helicopter mummsy and daddsy are TERRIFIED that pedobear will rape little timmy and throw him away in an old icechest, because Fox News said so.
"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. "
It doesn't actually say what "this extreme form" is, exactly. Presumably cut out in editing and nobody noticed that this was left stranded. There was probably a reference to so-called "high myopia", which does indeed cause people typically in their teens to go from the ordinary fully-corrected-with-glasses myopia to being much more so, with potential "myopic degeneration" of the retina. It's a mystery why this only happens to some myopes.
The figures are scaremongering. Although this has indeed been a notable public health problem for a good while - the government of Singapore has been concerned about it for over a decade - it is nonsense that 10% of student-age people will go blind from it.
I'm an ophthalmologist. I specialise in diseases of the retina.
Aberrations have appeared in my destiny prognostication engine!
However, the REAL problem is that helicopter mummsy and daddsy are TERRIFIED that pedobear will rape little timmy and throw him away in an old icechest, because Fox News said so.
It's not just Fox News, and it's not just pedophiles. If you've been keeping up with the news in recent years, you know that the newest trend is for do-gooders to call the police when they see even a 9 or 10-year-old walking alone (e.g. back from the park) or sitting in a car reading while Mommy's doing some shopping.
And guess what happens in too many cases? Parents get arrested for neglect. Children sometimes get removed for a while by protective services and parents may need to fight to get them back.
I'd be much more scared of police or child protective services kidnapping my child than "pedobear," because that's certainly the case. (In case you think I'm exaggerating, look up the stats. Roughly a HALF MILLION kids are removed by CPS for short or long term every year in the US... And CPS's own stats admit that in a full 1/3 of those cases, after review there is NO evidence of abuse or neglect... Not counting the cases where the claims are questionable, just the removals where the removals are completely unwarranted.)
Also, here's a blog that keeps track of some of the more egregious stories in the news.
You have not just spent too much time indoors, it has been in an echo chamber.