Mireia Hereu, Optometrist, Clínic: “Here comes the wolf!!! No, the wolf isn’t coming now, but, if we don’t watch out, he will end up coming"

Yes, relatively speaking.  Nowadays, work and technology force us to spend hours in front of a screen.  This won’t cause any eye disease or irreversible pathology, but it can cause eyestrain: eye discomfort, itching, headaches and, temporarily it can affect your near vision due to not blinking enough, and the lighting and posture not being correct...  

It is indifferent. It is true that the smaller the screen, the more we strain our eyes.  And especially with the mobile phone, the contrast may not be right either, or the viewing distance.  

Follow the visual hygiene rules: good lighting, no using screens in the dark, adopt an ergonomic posture, maintain a good viewing distance, and follow the 20-20-20 rule: for every 20 minutes spent staring at a screen, take a 20-second break, looking at something 20 metres away. Ideally, you should get up, go for a walk and look at something far away, in order to change your viewing distance and rest your back a little. You should also force yourself to blink and focus on different distances.  

There is a lot of controversy surrounding the subject of the blue light that screens can emit, but it has not been proven that this blue light is intense enough to cause eye disease.  It has been said that it can cause cataracts or damage to the retina, but there is no proof that this is really the case. So, you should not worry about developing an eye disease. 

No. Today’s children are tomorrow’s myopes.  Currently, 30% of the world population has myopia.  By 2050, half of the world’s population will be myopic.   Really, the exact cause of this increase in myopia is not entirely clear, but it is indeed related to screens. Myopia can have a genetic cause, like in my case and yours. 

However, myopia also has an environmental component: it is closely related to the time spent outdoors in natural sunlight.  It has been proven that, for example, in children who engage in the same activity indoors or outdoors, those who are more exposed to sunlight have less myopia than those exposed to indoor light.  We don’t know for sure whether it’s because of vitamin D or the dopamine it also generates, but sunlight prevents the eye from elongating and becoming myopic.   

Apart from that, it has also been found that prolonged tasks involving near vision (such as mobile phones, tablets, etc.)  can also lead to myopia.  Why? Because the eye gets used to focusing at a short distance.  And eventually evolution will lead to the eye being myopic.  Neanderthals needed to have good distance vision in order to hunt, and they didn’t care about seeing well up close.  And now evolution is going in the opposite direction: we want to see well up close. This genetic evolutionary change takes a long time, but we are already seeing it now.  And it may not be due to this evolutionary change in the shape of the eye genetically, but rather due to environmental conditions and all the near-vision work we are doing.  

Because children are still very elastic, very flexible.  Just as when you are young you can learn more because your brain has more plasticity, the eye has to finish developing.  So, if we do not provide the right conditions for the eye to develop in the way it should, if we are more predisposed to misusing it, then it will not develop correctly and you may tend to become more short-sighted.  Children also have a great capacity for accommodation than adults, and this over-accommodation can lead to myopia and other visual problems. 

Yes, it’s true that myopia can be solved with glasses.  But of course we are progressing towards higher levels of myopia, high myopia is pathologic myopia.  This can lead to a greater chance of retinal detachment, a greater chance of developing cataracts and a far greater chance of developing other serious eye diseases.  And that increases medical expenditure.  That is already being calculated. 

I think that the alarm is basically due to the fact that young children are already growing up with good technology usage habits: there is concern about the lack of sociability, that children want things straight away, that there is little acceptance of frustration… All of this is generated by screens. Not the screen itself, but all the information they contain. I think a little bit of alarm is warranted, but on a broader scale, not just regarding vision. 

The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends no screen time for children under two years of age and no more than one hour a day for children between 2 and 5 years of age. From here on, well, the fewer hours the better. And the more responsible the use of screens, the better.  I compare it to contact lenses: contact lenses don’t give you problems until they give you problems, and the eye says it doesn't want any more contact lenses.  But if you use the contact lenses properly, you can continue to use them all your life.  With screens I understand that it will be the same: we have to use them properly. Taking occasional breaks, ensuring you have good lighting, a good posture, and avoiding spending 12 hours looking at screens in just any manner, with any posture…  Try to have good visual hygiene: it’s not about cleaning our eyes well; it's about keeping your eyes in good condition, so that they don't cause problems in the long run. 

I believe we shouldn’t overreact… Some people say: Here comes the wolf!!! No, the wolf isn’t coming now, but, if we don’t watch out, he will end up coming.  Let’s correct things now while we’re still in time, and let’s start doing things right. But unfortunately, in this world, if we don’t shock people, we don’t function very well.  That’s how it is. 

An increasing number of studies are being carried out to see how we can control this myopia, and how we can treat the eyes of young people to prevent this progression of myopia. Not how to treat it, but how to prevent it from getting worse. Well, it has always been studied, but now increasing emphasis is bei

(Laughs) 8 hours, easily. I’m not worried because I try to have good visual hygiene… And my myopia is genetic.  I think I’m more concerned about the social aspect in children, which is very important.  And, in ter