University of Melbourne eye researcher, Professor Paul Baird says half the world's population is predicted to be short-sighted by 2050.
Myopia, or short-sightedness, is particularly a growing problem among young people. He's appealing to parents to encourage their children to play outside, not only for overall health and fitness, but to preserve their sight.
Baird tells Kathryn Ryan that spending time outdoors, rather than staring at screens, can have a big impact on good vision.
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He says there’s a substantial genetic component to myopia, but environmental impacts are a big factor too.
“You can’t extract one from the other necessarily, it’s a complication of how they work together to cause myopia.”
Myopia is normally thought to mostly occur in childhood and early adolescence but Baird says a new study shows a number of young adults presenting with myopia.
“We thought the young adults presenting with myopia hadn’t actually been seen before, but in some cases, it seemed to be totally novel; they’d experienced no visual problems before. They blamed it on intense computer work.”
Baird says the debate over what causes myopia, and whether it’s caused by ‘close-work’, has been going on for more than 100 years.
“Really, it’s just the impact of focussing on something constantly is probably the main issue. If you’re looking at your computer screen and you’re looking at it for eight hours a day without a break, or you’re gaming or looking at your TV very closely, then your eyes are not getting any relaxation.
“That is thought to lead to this affront in terms of what’s happening to your eye, it’s just seeing a single plain of image coming into the eye.”
He says there’s a rapid change in the amount of myopia presenting in society. Around the world now, around 30 percent of the world’s population are myopic and that’s expected to go up to around 50 percent by 2050.
“That’s an incredible number of people, that’s going to be 3 or 4 billion people who are short sighted in 30 years’ time.”
As for what we can do to maintain healthy eyes and try to prevent myopia, Baird recommends 5-10 minute breaks from screen time spent looking into distance.