Unregulated online classes are affecting schoolchildren in Kashmir
SRINAGAR : Last year in August, five months into her online classes, Nisar Dharma’s eightyear-old daughter suddenly woke up to blurred vision and headache. Her parents were shocked when they saw that she could not tell the number of fingers her father was waving in front of her.
“She couldn’t tell what was going on the TV screen and couldn’t even read anything from her books. She couldn’t see my face and could only see some blurred patches,” Dharma, a 34-year-old journalist, said.
The Class-3 student had been attending video classes on zoom daily from 10:00 am to 2:00 pm on a smartphone with just 20 minutes of break in between.
“Her eyes kind of gave up. It was absolutely scary to the point that if she would stand up, she would just fall,” the father said.
For two months, Dharma consulted paediatricians, neurologists and ophthalmologists but could not conclude on an exact illness her daughter was suffering from and its cause. “In desperation, I even went to a faith healer,” he said.
Fortunately, he consulted a doctor from Hyderabad on the phone who concluded that her daughter’s illness was directly related to her online classes. For the second year in a row as the second wave of Covid-19 pandemic is wreaking havoc, the educational institutions have been closed again. The schools, particularly private institutions, have been aggressively pursuing online classes for the students, even for those who are as young as four-years-old. While government schools have been holding online classes mostly from Class-5 onwards, the private institutions have been even asking kindergarten students to attend online interactions with teachers.
Parents and experts are saying that the prolonged exposure of children to screens is affecting the physical as well as the mental health of the children.
Sajad Ahmad Khanday, associate professor of ophthalmology at Shri Maharaja Hari Singh (SMHS) Hospital, said that the more the children use near-vision devices like mobiles and laptops, their eyes become more nearsighted (myope). “Their accommodation power overplays and slowly their far-vision gets compromised. And as children remain wedged to the devices inside, they get less exposure to sunlight which contains vitamin D which is important for the development of vision. So with the excessive use of screens and inadequate exposure to sunlight, their myopia increases. And it becomes a very vicious circle,” he said.