Love Your Kids’ Eyes: Lessen their Screen Time & Encourage Going Outside

There’s a greater demand today for eyeglasses for kids, and it’s not because of a new fashion trend. Worldwide, more and more people, including kids, need to wear glasses because of the growing number of people with myopia.

Myopia, or as we know it more commonly by nearsightedness, is when the distance between the retina and the cornea is too far apart. In other words, the eye is elongated far back. Why it’s called nearsightedness is because this elongation of the eye makes it so that objects that are near are clear but far objects tend to blur.

So why is it affecting our children? Because of all the gadgets that we let them spend their time on. A day could go by with the kids watching on the tab, playing on the computer, or scrolling on social media—this, in itself does not cause myopia. What makes them require eyeglasses for kids is the fact that, because they spend too much time on gadgets, they also tend to spend too much time indoors.


See, exposure to the sun makes us produce dopamine, specifically for our eyes. The longer we stay indoors or unexposed to sunlight, the natural tendency of the eyes of developing children (around the ages of 2-8) to adjust by elongating to help us focus better on near objects. Dopamine stops this elongation, so a little bit of sun can actually do your kids a lot of good.


If you want your kids to not need prescription eyeglasses for kids, it’s a good idea to not only lessen the time they spend on watching YouTube, browsing Facebook, and playing RoS, but it is also important to encourage them to go outside, get some sun, and play with other kids.