[war1025]

I always assumed the all kids having glasses anymore thing was just because they spend way too much time on phones and tablets watching tv.

It used to be common knowledge that sitting too close to a screen messed up your vision, and somehow we threw that advice out the window.

[jaggederest]

Last I heard the major contributor to childhood myopia was a lack of outdoor light exposure. Screen time is a red herring compared to spending daylight hours outside.

https://www.businessinsider.com/kids-that-play-outside-need-...

[im3w1l]

Outdoor activity is being outcompeted by screens so it seems very relevant to me.

[tsimionescu]

If that study is to be believed, a child catching pokemon on their phone in the park is likely to develop better eye sight than a child reading a book at home. So I think the difference is pretty relevant, and the fact that outdoor activity is out-competed by screens would just be a confounding factor.

[im3w1l]

Of course, books are a thing, but we all know that without access to screens kids would get bored out of their minds staying indoors. Indeed, that is the premise of the grounding punishment.

So a hypothetical of a boy reading books until Pokemon Go made him spend every second outside just seem like arguing for the sake of arguing.

[tsimionescu]

That was not my hypothetical.

My point is that the recommendation to parents should be to get their kids outside, not to get their kids away from screens (IF that study is to be believed!).

If parents are keeping their kids away from screens but still inside, there may be no real benefits. And there are plenty of ways for kids to entertain themselves inside even without a screen, especially for younger kids.

[stevewodil]

It is a myth that sitting too close to a screen will cause your eyesight to deteriorate. Time spent using screens contributes to eyestrain, but not a change in vision (supposedly)

[throwaway9980]

And because age does cause your eyesight to deteriorate and you need to accumulate age to accumulate time spent in front of screen, people think it must be all the time in front of the screen.

[numpad0]

What if it wasn’t? There were few anecdotal miracle stories that excessive VR usage fixed cross eyes and shortsightedness for some people. Don’t make sense, unless mental well-being had been one part of the cause all along.

Not to say everyone with vision problems should jump into dubious “practices” like playing VR games all day long or start taking some drugs, no, but I think a link between vision and mind is an interesting possibility.

[cma]

All VR has a sweet spot with a distortion profile that slightly shifts as your eye looks around, which moves your pupil a bit in space, so it is a bit different than normal vision, unless using eye tracking to correct the shift in distortion. Something like that could have had an effect, rather than mental well-being.