Screen time Overload Damages Eye Health of Youngest Patients

Jan 30, 2018 | Uncategorized

One peek into the waiting room and you’ll see it’s no secret that kids (and adults) spend a lot of time staring at screens. Children between the ages of two and eight are spending up to three hours a day playing video games, looking at smart phones and other mobile devices or watching tv. And it’s impacting their eye health.

But it’s not the screens themselves that’s causing the problems. Because we tend to use screens indoors, it’s a lack of sunlight that is impacting eyesight.

“The reason why that’s a problem is not so much that the device is sending some magic signal to the eye that’s damaging it, it’s that when you’re on those devices you tend to be inside and not outdoors in the sunlight,” Dr. Christopher Starr, an ophthalmologist at Weill Cornell Medical Center in New York City, told CBS This Morning.

Sunlight triggers dopamine in the brain, which keeps the eye from getting too elongated during childhood, helping prevent myopia.
So tell you patients to get their kids off the screens and into the sunshine…just don’t forget the sunscreen!

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