Because of phones and computers, half of the world's population will be short-sighted by 2050

Nearly half of the world's population is expected to be nearsighted by 2050.

This is what a recent scientific study has revealed about the serious implications of increased screen time for children and young adults.

The study, which was conducted at the Institute of Vision and Eye Research at Anglia Ruskin University in Britain, and published its results in "The Lancet Digital Health", revealed that "high levels of exposure to screens can increase the risk of myopia by up to 80 percent."

The researchers confirmed the association between screen time and an increased risk and severity of myopia in both children and young adults, through their study, which was an international effort that included contributions from scientists from the United Kingdom, China, Singapore and Australia.

More than 3,000 previous studies focusing on the relationship between myopia and smart device screen time were analyzed.

All these data included individuals aged no more than 33 years.

This analytical process led to the conclusion that higher levels of smart device screen time were associated with an approximately 30 percent greater association with myopia.

The researchers also reported that when users greatly increase their phone or tablet time with excessive computer use, this risk jumps by up to about 80 percent.

In a statement, Professor of Ophthalmology at the Vision and Eye Research Institute, Robert Bourne, says that half of the world's population is at risk of developing myopia by 2050, explaining that this health crisis is escalating dramatically, and therefore the latest study is considered the most comprehensive in this regard.

The importance of these results emerges at a time when children and young people spend more time in front of different screens, especially in light of the Corona pandemic, and the measures taken in that regard, including “distance education”, which contributed to increasing the time to stay in front of screens and stare at them.

Born says that the increased rates of exposure to screens and staring at them contributed to an urgent need to conduct research related to the impact of exposure to screens and digital devices on the eye, explaining that many people are not aware of this, and therefore underestimate the issue of increasing screen exposure time, which necessitates the necessity of That future studies focus on objective measures to deal with that information.

In 2019, the World Health Organization issued the first global vision report, in which it counted the presence of more than one billion people all over the world living with visual impairment;

Because they do not get the care they need to treat health conditions such as nearsightedness, farsightedness, glaucoma and cataracts.

Altogether, there are at least 2.2 billion people living with visual impairment or blindness, of which more than 1 billion were preventable or not yet treated.

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