
The Puzzling Rise in Nearsighted Children - Kortaggio
http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-mysterious-spike-in-nearsighted-children-1429543997?mod=WSJ_article_EditorsPicks_1
======
i_am_so_tired
After years of staring at screens at work, an optometrist told me I was
shortsighted for life and insisted I buy prescription glasses. I then became a
landscape gardener for four years. Guess what? My shortsightedness
disappeared, as did my hayfever and weak knees. Now I am back in an office
(much much better wages) and my shortsightedness is starting to return. So a
combination of aggressive diagnosis and lack of eye exercise.

~~~
msarlitt
It's true. The human eye simply wasn't meant to stare at and interpret
millions of tiny pixels. It causes strain over time, which leads to
nearsightedness. Luckily it's (at least) partially reversable, as you
experienced.

~~~
bryanlarsen
The article presents evidence contradicting the strain hypothesis, and
presents the sunlight hypothesis instead.

------
sjm
Related article that made the rounds recently:
[http://www.nature.com/news/the-myopia-
boom-1.17120](http://www.nature.com/news/the-myopia-boom-1.17120)

~~~
swamp40
There are multiple startup ideas in that article.

~~~
leoc
Yes. Trying to fix myopia by getting children exposed to more sunlight is a
bit of a "let them eat single-source organic asparagus" response: it makes
would-be social reformers feel good, but it's not a realistic way to reliably
give all children the (apparently) minimum three daily hours of 10,000 lux.
Getting all children outside for three hours every day is not realistically
possible, and wouldn't be pleasant or even desirable for all of them: bad
weather, unsafe neighbourhoods, air pollution. In areas with often-overcast
conditions and/or short winter[ days](EDIT) it wouldn't even be sufficient.
Classrooms that admit more natural light would be great, but they're not a
realistic means of getting to 3h × 10,000 lux across the board, if only
because replacing almost the entire stock of primary-school classrooms would
be a slow and expensive process. The most obvious solution is to rig up
classrooms with multiple SAD lights, light-meter them to ensure that every
desk gets at least 10,000 lux when the system is on, then run the system for
maybe four hours every classroom day.

(Speaking of which, if I was in charge of a minor child I'd go ahead and stick
a SAD lamp in its bedroom and leave it on for most of the day.)

~~~
trhway
>Getting all children outside for three hours every day is not realistically
possible, and wouldn't be pleasant or even desirable for all of them: bad
weather, unsafe neighbourhoods, air pollution.

i don't understand that. Where do children are supposed to get daily multi-
hour physical activity? On the treadmill in the basement? And if children
aren't getting such amount of physical activity - that would border on neglect
toward their health, physical and emotional. (of course my POV is affected by
the fact that i'm a child of 197x-198x when we were "free-range" children back
in USSR and from what i heard it was about the same in USA back then)

~~~
leoc
It's not a matter of whether it's generally desirable for all children to
spend three hours outside every day. One problem is whether admonishing
parents about it is actually going to make it so for all children. Another
problem is whether it's actually possible and safe for all children no matter
how desirable it might be in general. A third problem is how the strong the
sun actually is while they are outside playing. For five days out of seven in
the winter millions of children in northern Europe travel to school around
sunrise, get maybe an hour outside during the day, then come home and play
football under grey evening skies and sodium lights.

------
swamp40
I have always wondered about this phenomenon. It always just seemed
unreasonably coincidental that as soon as we started testing children and
_could_ prescribe them glasses, there seemed to be an epidemic. Historical
documents never seemed to showcase a perpetual 50%+ nearsightedness epidemic.

------
nether
Kids should be outside playing, not coding.

Adults, too.

~~~
analog31
Coding is playing.

Just kidding, of course. One thing I've noticed is that my kids have vastly
more homework than I ever had, and homework now starts in kindergarten. There
are only so many waking hours in the day.

~~~
TeMPOraL
I had a lot of homework as well but at some point I pretty much decided "fuck
that, I have better things to do" and learned programming instead. My math
grades went down a bit but I actually _learned something_.

~~~
sanoli
I did the same, and just started skipping classes and going to the library
instead. It made getting a job harder, but I don't regret it one bit.

------
rasz_pl
tablets

------
emailrhoads
Darwinism dwindling

------
sukilot
Kids spening too much time on phones, like Chinese got nearsighted spending
too much time doing schoolwork.

~~~
bryanlarsen
Use your phone or do your schoolwork outside and your eyes will be fine.

~~~
thaumasiotes
Eh, that's not necessarily true. I've tried reading books outside and spent
all my time squinting because the glare of the sun on the paper was so bright.

It's why I love the grey screen of the original Kindle so much. Want to read
it outside? You can do that without going blind!

For my phone, though, I can barely see the image on screen if I'm holding it
in sunlight. When I've used laptops outside they've had the same problem. LCD
screens kind of need to be used in the dark.

