In the last few decades, the world has become highly digitalized. Literally anything can nowadays be done through an app on our smart devices. Which is a good thing as it makes our lives so much easier, but it may not be ideal from the perspective of the development of vision in children and teenagers. On the other hand, though, digital devices also enable us to perform certain vision training approaches from literally anywhere which not that long ago seemed just a distant dream.
What children see dictate how their eyes will develop
In the last few decades, the world has witnessed an enormous rise of myopia among the population. By 2050 as much as half of the world’s population could be myopic if current trends continue. That is partly the result of our way of life that has changed dramatically in the last 50 years. Evolutionary, humans are meant to spend most of their lives outside with the eyes focused on far distant objects. Only when certain fine tasks, reading, or writing are required, a muscle in our eyes will contract and bring the near objects into focus – a process referred to as accommodation.
If, however, children are focused most of their time at near distance (reading, writing, or using smartphone or tablet) the eyes adapt and myopia occurs. Hence it is not hard to understand such a rise of myopia cases among the population. If you are interested to find out more about how our eyes develop when we grow and what can we do to halt the progression of myopia click here and read a very interesting blog on that.
What you should do then?
The fact is that the biology and physiology of our eyes just cannot keep up with the rate of changes to our lifestyle. We must be aware that near activities, including extensive use of electronic devices during childhood and adolescence, serve as a good ground for the development of myopia. Therefore, encourage your kids to spend as much time as possible outdoors and most importantly limit their time using electronic devices – except for vision training with our AmblyoPlay of course.