Too much time indoors damages children’s eyes

CLIMBING trees and spending hours playing outside used to be part of every childhood. But today’s youngsters are more likely to be stuck indoors – and it may be harming their eyesight.

And it is not just because of the time spent sitting in front of a screen. For a lack of natural daylight is thought to be driving up rates of short- sightedness among the young.

Spending an extra 40 minutes a day in the sunshine has been shown to improve children’s sight dramatically.

In China, where four teenagers in five are short-sighted, transparent classrooms are being tested in a bid to increase pupils’ exposure to natural light.

Chinese scientists have reported a 23 per cent reduction in myopia – short-sightedness – in children who spend an extra 40 minutes a day in the sunshine. Studies in Australia and by Ohio State University in the US produced similar results.

Leading eye surgeon David Allamby warned that an increase in eyesight problems is likely in Brit- ain if children do not regain a love of the great outdoors. Two in five adults in this country are shortsighted, but Mr Allamby said those rates are likely to increase.

‘For 100 years we have researched into the effects of reading and pro- longed study on making shortsightedness worse,’ he said. ‘It has become a common belief that spending too much time inside a book, or today on a screen, will make anyone’s eyesight worse.

‘Recent research might have turned this on its head. There are several studies showing that lack of daylight might be the principal reason why children become more short-sighted, rather than prolonged reading.

‘What wasn’t factored into our decades of research was that reading and studying are done indoors, away from daylight. So the link between studying and myopia might really be a red herring, where the close vision activity is just a proxy for lack of daylight.’

Donald Mutti, who led the Ohio study, told the journal Nature: ‘We thought it was an odd finding but it just kept coming up as we did the analyses.’

Mr Allamby, who runs Focus Clinics in London, said: ‘The incidence of short sight in the West is rising, now affecting around 40 per cent of the population.

‘If we look at hunter-gatherer societies that live mainly outdoors, such as those studied in Gabon, we find that only 0.5 per cent of adults are afflicted by short sight.’