Young people aged 16 to 24 are increasingly reporting visual disturbances. Exposure to screens could be involved.
The eyesight of young adults deteriorates. According to the annual Barometer of the Visual Health of the French, carried out since 2005 by OpinionWay on behalf of AsnaV (the National Association for the Improvement of Sight), 16-24 year olds are developing more and more eyesight and suffer from eyestrain.
The barometer indeed shows that myopia is gaining ground among 16-24 year olds. Thus, 41% of them say they have difficulty seeing from afar, compared to 29% in 2016. In addition, 40% complain of visual fatigue, compared to 23% in 2012.
10 hours a day in front of the screens
Overall, nearly six out of ten young people (59%) report having a visual problem, compared to 47% in the general population. This represents an increase of seven points over the previous year.
The survey also highlights the place that screens take in the lives of young people aged 16 to 24. If the latter tend to watch less television than the average French (1h36 against 2h03), they spend on the other hand much more time in front of a screen (computer, smartphone…), at the rate of nine hours and 57 minutes per day, i.e. three hours more than the French average (six hours and 22 minutes). Young people consult their smartphones on average for four hours every day.
The fault of the screens?
“From there to incriminating activities that favor proximity vision, with or without a screen, there is only one step that we no longer hesitate to take,” writes AsnaV in a press release.
In fact, these long sessions in front of screens could be the cause of the increase in visual disturbances observed in this age group. But they are not the only ones: studies have shown that activities such as reading, for prolonged periods, can increase the risk of myopia. Indeed, this visual disturbance is favored by the lack of sun.
Asnav calls on parents to go regularly to an ophthalmologist to have their children’s sight checked.
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