It seems our eyes are deteriorating, and it could all be down to staring at small screens. New research by a sight clinic has shown that short sightedness has increased by over 35 per cent since 1997 and it’s set get even worse. Stop looking at your phones people. And your computer screens while you’re at it.
According to the research by Focus Clinics, half of Brits own a smartphone, and spend two hours a day gawping at them. We also hold them much closer to our faces than we would a book or a newspaper, although that might change given the propensity for massive high-res phones.
It’s not just our phoneslabs that are causing issues though. Staring at your computer screen all day long also puts a huge strain on your eyes. The result is that myopia is continuing to develop later into life, no longer ceasing in a person’s early 20s, but carrying on into the 40s.
That’s before age-related long sightedness starts to kick in, of course.
The net result is that a lot more of us are doomed to wear glasses for our entire lives, even when there wasn’t anything wrong with your eyes originally. Maybe it’s time we started making the text bigger on our 5-inch phones so we can hold them at arm’s length? Either that or start sticking an eye-test sheet up on the walls so we can stretch our lenses a bit each day; your eyes are a performance piece of equipment after all, and you wouldn’t catch Usain Bolt smashing records without doing a few stretches before a race, right?