Failing children's eyesight blamed on TV, computers

Short-sightedness could soon become epidemic among children and young adults because they spend too much time looking at television screens and playing computer games.

Research in Australia has discovered that rising myopia does not have any fundamental genetic cause. Instead a combination of increased time focusing on close objects, allied to stress, is enough to bring about long-term changes in children's eyes.

"As kids spend more time on computers or watching telly, they are going to become myopic," said Ian Morgan, of the Australian National University in Canberra.

The warning, carried in New Scientist magazine, follows a range of international studies to try to explain a rising tide of short-sightedness in several countries. A variety of explanations, including diet and genetics, have been examined and dismissed. Instead, lifestyle is overwhelmingly to blame, suggests Dr Morgan.

In Sweden, 50 per cent of children aged 12 now have myopia. The prediction is that by the time they are 18, the level will have passed 70 per cent.

Myopia is caused when the eyeball grows too long, meaning that light focuses in front of the retina. It cannot be cured directly, although it can be corrected either by lenses or by laser surgery to remove some of the lens, effectively shortening the eyeball.

The problem is less common in children who play more sport, probably because they spend less time indoors. Those who read less also tend to spend more time outdoors, and similarly suffer less from the problem.

The Royal National Institute for the Blind estimates that 12 million Britons are myopic, 500,000 suffering from "high degree myopia", in which the eye becomes over-elongated. However, Marek Karas, adviser to the institute, said: "Myopia is correctable. With the right lenses, you can be back to normal.

"The trouble is that it can panic parents to hear findings like this. In Britain our approach is to let people get on with what they're doing and not try to influence their behaviour."

Genes have been discounted as the cause of most of the effects. In India, about 10 per cent of 18-year-old men are myopic. Yet in Singapore, which has a higher standard of living, 70 per cent of 18-year-olds of Indian origin have myopia. Similarly in Israel, boys studying in schools that insist on close study of religious texts had 80 per cent myopia rates.

"The simplest explanation is that a massive environmental effect is swamping out the genetic influence," said Dr Morgan.

- INDEPENDENT