Doctors are warning for parents with grade-school children who rub their eyes repeatedly, appear blurred or complain of blurred vision.
This is because they may show symptoms of myopia, or proximity, which is true among elementary students because of all the screen time they are racking up during lockdown.
Jamie Melissi took her 7-year-old daughter Juliana for an eye check-up when she noticed that second-graders were not acting like themselves, especially after a day of distance education.
“She was suffering a lot and was suffering from a headache,” Staten was quoted as saying by the Post.
Juliana, who studies in public school, got lucky and didn’t need glasses, but Melissi had to resort to the law: the laptop was for schooling only.
In Pediatric Ophthalmic Consultants, a private practice on the Upper West Side, pediatrician Dr. Milne Ranca sees patients as young as Juliana, who require eyeglasses due to long segments of close-up work.
“It’s surprising,” Ranka told The Post. “We are now seeing proximity in the lower level – even in the first-, second- and third-grade – and we had never seen one before.”
Uptick is what Ranka considers to be a part of the boom in twain and teens that began a decade ago, when tablets and smartphones first hit stores.
Like elementary children today, junior high and high school students talked to Ranka about blurred vision, double vision, headaches, and difficulty reading. Being stressed out and not getting enough sleep can also be a factor.
“These complaints are not uncommon in high school or junior high school – they are under more pressure and they are sleeping less,” he said, “but we are not used to hearing similar things from young children.”
Optician Sam Pirozzolo is filling more eyeglass prescriptions at his Stineway Eye Care Centers in Queens for proximity, and he understands that after listening to parents tell him the same story: their children roll out of bed. And fall down in front of their computer for more than 18 hours, going to school or playing games – often without lights.
Pirojolo told The Post, “Now, they are in a dark room, not looking out of the window, focusing on a distance of 2 feet in the room.
And the incident is happening in lockdown in other cities, a Emory University study shows. In Feicheng, China, a population of 1 million, 123,535 boys and girls were screened in schools – first- through sixth-graders – in quarantine after six months and for 6-, 7- and 8-year-old children with myopia. The rate had skyrocketed. The largest rate increase was for first-graders – from about six percent to about 22 percent.
Preventing or preventing Miopia is important because the condition can give rise to serious diseases such as cataracts and cataracts later in life, both Ranka and Pirozzolo said.
Ranca’s tips include elevating the contrast and print size of your laptop, and viewing the large screen remotely for movies and games. And during class or work, he prefers the 20-20-20 rule: For every 20 minutes of close-up activity, look 20 feet away for 20 seconds.
For Pirozzolo, the best medicine for children would be back to normal: “Going to school would be a good thing for every child’s eyes.”
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