One in every four children suffer from vision problems due to smartphone addiction: AIIMS study

Due to playing video games or watching videos on mobile for long hours, children's eyesight is becoming weak at an earlier age than before. In a study conducted at AIIMS, it has been found that this disease has increased three times in children in the last 10-15 years.

A survey was conducted by the RP Center of AIIMS in the year 2001 regarding the disease of myopia in children. At that time this disease was seen in seven percent of children in Delhi. After this, ten years later in 2011, in a survey conducted at RP Centre, 13.5% of children were found to be suffering from myopia. Now after Corona, in the study conducted in 2023, this figure has increased to 20 to 22 percent. The need for spectacles for children is also increasing in villages.

One in four children in cities and one in seven in villages are wearing spectacles. Earlier, this problem started in children at the age of 12 to 13 years and the number of glasses remained fine till the age of 18-19. Now children have started having this problem at an early age. The reason for this is that children's screen time has increased.

Children keep playing games or watching videos on mobile for two to three hours continuously. Many people do not even make their children wear glasses early. This affects children's education. Therefore glasses must be worn.

Professor Dr. Rohit Saxena, an expert in children's eye diseases at RP Centre, said that a study was conducted by dividing three thousand school children into two groups. 

Children of one class were given time to play outside the class for half an hour every day in school. During this time the children were also made to do yoga in the shade. Nothing like this was done to the children of other classes. The study found that the children of the first class did not have much need for new spectacles or increasing the number of spectacles.

If children play outside for half an hour every day, their eyesight remains good. If you play outside for two hours every day and reduce screen time, there will be no need to buy new glasses and glasses for a long time. The screen size should be that of a laptop or desktop.

Doctors say that if a child reads a book from close range or while lying down, feels a prick in the eyes and squints in the eyes, then these can be symptoms of weak vision.

At home, parents often tell us not to watch TV from close range. Eyesight will become weak. In fact, if you keep focusing on nearby things like mobile, book, or TV screens from close range for a long time, then the distance vision starts getting blurred and the habit of the eyes to focus on distance reduces.

In India, 34% of people above 45 years of age have weak eyesight. According to the estimates of the Ophthalmology Department of AIIMS, by 2050, 40 percent of the children of India will have weak eyes. It is useless to advise India, who is glued to the screen of a mobile, laptop, or tab, not to use the screen. But according to doctors, the bigger the screen, the less the problem.  

Doctors advise to focus on distant objects intermittently – the 20-20-20 formula can prove effective for those who use screens for a long time. What are these rules, also understand this

(20-20-20 rule - after watching the screen for 20 minutes - take a 20-second break and look 20 feet away.)  

There is no formula as to how much screen time should be, but according to the Ophthalmology Department of AIIMS, do not be glued to the mobile screen for more than 2 hours in a day. And take a break every 20 minutes. Earlier your eyelids used to blink 15 to 16 times in a minute but due to being lost in the screen, you forgot to blink and now you blink only 6 to 7 times in a minute - pay attention and keep blinking.