Photo: CONCEPTUAL IMAGES/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY
An optometrist is concerned more children are now at risk of getting myopia or short-sightedness, due to the increase in daily screen-time.
A Specsavers survey had found more than half of parents aren't aware of myopia in their tamariki and what causes it.
"Myopia is the common term of being near sighted or short-sighted, where objects far away are out of focus. Children are able to read things up in front of them, but they often move closer to things like the television or complain that they can't see the board." Specsavers Optometrist Arshad Hoosen said.
"In classrooms, what I have seen increasingly in my time as an optometrist is children not mentioning these issues to their parents or teachers, and it being missed, sometimes in worst cases, for their whole schooling career."
Hoosen said excessive screentime and not enough time outside are contributing to myopia.
"What's happening is we have pushed so much technology, screen time and indoor time onto our personal lives onto our families. We all know what happened during COVID and the work from home situation.
"What's happened is the eye has gone under structural changes, so what happens is the image focuses in front of the retina, leading to very large prescription changes affecting our young kids, which never used to happen decades ago.
"According to the World Health Organisation, by 2050 half the population will have myopia of some kind which is staggering." he said.
He said screentime is a huge problem.
"Research has said that screen time is being pushed onto kids from very young ages, things like iPads, Youtube, parents smartphones. These are the things that I'm seeing in the practice which is, you know, a child will come and their parents phone is used for videos, playing games.
"The research conducted shows that many, many hours is spent on devices to occupy kids for their learning, sometimes to watch videos, but the negative impact is the increase of myopia, which has been well researched and publicised.
"Children who spend time indoors - that's another thing, Not enough natural daylight. The recommendation is to have two hours of daylight time outside as another protective measure."
Hoosen said the shape of the eye is changing, as a result.
"We're not giving ourselves enough time to relax our vision and our accommodative muscles and the eye, in turn, is actually adapting by elongating, which is actually the eyeball, growing longer as children are getting getting older from the ages of 3 to 12," he said.
"The images actually in front of the retina and the eyeball is longer so it's a physical change that affects children for the rest of their lives."
