When taking online classes at home, follow these 6 points to keep your children away from myopia!

The epidemic has become serious again. Now, primary and secondary school students in many places have to take online classes at home again !

It’s already stressful enough to stare at your children, take care of their eating, drinking, and toileting, and arrange for them to take online classes. Many parents may also worry about one more thing, which is what will happen to their children’s eyesight if they stare at the screen every day to take online classes!

Taking online classes every day will always have an impact on children's eyesight. So, during online classes, what can we do to help protect our eyesight? Which practices are right and which are wrong?

Let me first state a conclusion: unlike what many people imagine, the (qualified) screen itself is not the direct cause of vision damage and myopia; an inappropriate eye environment and a lack of rest lead to eye fatigue, which is the main cause of myopia.

Next, I will introduce 6 eye care tips, including three “quick” and three “early” tips, to help you protect your children’s bright eyes.

01

Quickly change the big screen!

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What kind of screen is more comfortable to look at? Bright, clear, and flicker-free.

What kind of book is easy to read? The characters are large, the lines are sparse, and the printing is clear.

The reason is simple. The larger the screen, the easier it is to see clearly. The less the child has to lean forward, and the easier it is to keep the distance between the eyes and the screen. Some parents may give their children a mobile phone to take online classes, but the result is that the content of the picture is not clear enough, and the child can only lean forward to see it, which can easily cause eye fatigue. Therefore, it is recommended that parents use computers or tablets for their children to take online classes.

Of course, sometimes parents may also need to use computers or tablets to work at home. This can also be solved. Many TVs or TV boxes now have screen projection functions. Projecting the content of the mobile phone to the TV can also solve this problem.

Some friends may have questions, if the projector is bigger, would it be better to use a projector?

It should be noted here that the user experience of many home projectors is not good, not "bright and clear", and it can even be said that the picture is quite dim and blurry. This is obviously not suitable for children to take online classes.

Of course, there are some high-quality, high-performance projectors that can indeed project bright and clear images. But it is generally not recommended to use a projector. The reason is that when using a projector, people generally tend to reduce the ambient light - it's so much more exciting to watch a movie this way. However, this involves our second tip -

02

Turn on the headlights!

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When we walk out of the dark room into the sunshine, we will squint for a while. Conversely, when we go from a bright place to a dark place, we will also be in darkness for a while. This is the eyes adjusting and adapting.

If children are taking online classes in low light conditions and are staring at a dark screen, their eyes will have to "jump back and forth" between light and dark, and they will soon become tired. Therefore, when children are taking online classes, it is necessary to maintain adequate ambient lighting, such as turning on ceiling lights, so that the environment and the screen are about the same brightness, so that the eyes will not be easily tired.

In fact, this is not only true for online classes, but also for homework. Many parents think that turning on a desk lamp is enough for homework at night. In fact, turning on the main lights in the room at the same time is the correct way to be friendly to the eyes.

03

Get out of the house quickly!

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As mentioned in the previous article, a qualified screen is not the main cause of myopia. Some parents may be confused. Many children’s eyesight has dropped sharply because they play with mobile phones too much.

In fact, on the one hand, this is because many children play with mobile phones for hours without restraint, which causes eye fatigue. On the other hand, it is because playing with mobile phones takes up the time for outdoor activities, and insufficient outdoor activities directly lead to insufficient light exposure to the eyes.

Even if the artificial lighting in the room looks "bright", it is nothing compared to the natural light. For example, according to the national standard, the illumination of the indoor working or reading space at a height of 75 cm from the ground should exceed 300 lux. At this level, we already think it is quite bright. But what about outdoors? Outdoor illumination on a sunny day in summer can easily exceed 10,000 lux, and even more than 100,000 lux at noon. Activities under such light intensity help the retina secrete dopamine, inhibit the elongation of the eye axis, and prevent myopia. Moreover, when you are outdoors, you can often look into the distance to relax your eyes and relieve fatigue.

Therefore, even if you are "staying at home", if conditions permit, you can spend 1 hour outdoors with your children in natural light every day. Note that this refers to 1 hour of activity, not 1 hour of exercise. So, taking a walk in the community, walking the dog, or sitting on a garden bench to talk are all fine. This not only helps prevent myopia, but is also a good way to strengthen parent-child communication while staying at home.

Don't worry if you can't go out at all, we have an alternative method.

This is the famous 20-20-20 rule, which means that for every 20 minutes of using your child's eyes, you can look at something 20 feet (about 6 meters) away for 20 seconds. Of course, we don't have to be so rigid. After the child finishes an online class, it's enough for him to get up and move around and look out the bright window.

Okay, now that we have talked about the three “fast”s, let’s talk about the three “early”s.

04

Check your eyesight early and regularly

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Myopia is related to the elongation of the eye axis. When the eyeball grows too long in the front-to-back direction, the light rays gathered by the lens will be imaged in front of the retina, becoming "close". This is myopia. Myopia caused by this kind of eyeball deformation is true myopia, which does not occur suddenly but accumulates over time.

Because of this, if we can detect the slight changes in the eyeball early, we can intervene early when the child shows signs of myopia, and try to save the child from wearing glasses early. Specifically, under normal circumstances, children and adolescents can have a routine vision examination every six months to one year starting from the age of three.

If one of the parents is myopic, they should pay more attention to taking their children for regular check-ups - heredity is also an important factor in causing myopia.

05

Choose OK glasses as early as possible

OK lenses, or orthokeratology lenses, can correct the shape of the eyeball and prevent the development of myopia when worn correctly. There are some misunderstandings about these lenses, such as whether they will wear away the cornea. In fact, if worn correctly, OK lenses will not rub against the cornea.

Here we would like to remind you that when children are old enough to wear OK glasses, the earlier they start wearing them, the better the effect of reducing myopia will be. This is why it is recommended that you take your children to check their eyesight regularly as early as possible.

It should be noted that not all myopic children are suitable for wearing OK lenses. Professional doctors should determine whether OK lenses can be used and fit them. We should also pay attention to the standardized cleaning and care of OK lenses to prevent bacteria from growing on the lenses and causing keratitis and other problems.

06

Get a pair of good glasses as soon as possible

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For those children who have been confirmed to be myopic, they need to wear glasses. Don't hesitate at this time. Some parents may hear people say "once you start wearing glasses, your myopia will continue to deepen", so they dare not wear glasses for their children. This is probably because the optometry is not careful enough, the glasses are not suitable, and the eyestrain is aggravated. Well-fitted glasses can correct vision and relieve eyestrain.

Therefore, it is recommended that you take your children to a regular medical institution for mydriasis eye examination so that accurate results can be obtained.

Finally, I would like to add a few more points about the harm of myopia. Myopia is not just a matter of wearing glasses being troublesome or not being able to do certain jobs. As people age, they are more likely to suffer from floaters and cataracts, and in severe cases, they are more likely to suffer from open-angle glaucoma. Many people believe that so-called laser surgery can cure myopia, but this is also a misunderstanding, because this type of surgery can only correct vision, but cannot return the already elongated eyeball to its original state. For people with high myopia, if the eye is impacted or the intraocular pressure changes drastically, retinal detachment may occur, which is why people with high myopia are usually not recommended to donate blood.

Therefore, for the sake of children's eye health, and to save hundreds or thousands of dollars on glasses and OK lenses, we should help our children develop good eye habits as early as possible.

Author | Ding Zong

Review | Jia Changkai, deputy chief physician, Xiamen Eye Center, Xiamen University

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