Are new generation becoming more nearsighted ?

Discussion in 'Human Science' started by timojin, Mar 30, 2017.

  1. timojin Valued Senior Member

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    Do we spend more time indoors than our parents ?
     
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  3. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

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    Being indoors doesn't make you nearsighted.
     
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  5. timojin Valued Senior Member

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    Around the world, more and more people are becoming nearsighted. Today’s younger generations have a much higher incidence of myopia than their parents do, according to public health data, and the rate is expected to keep rising in the years ahead. This creeping loss of distance vision is more advanced in developed countries, where young people spend large amounts of their time indoors. The problem is worst in Asia, where nearsightedness affects roughly half of the population. And it’s much higher in some subgroups.

    “In college-age people in South Korea, the rate is over 90%,” says Susan Vitale, a research epidemiologist at the National Eye Institute of the National Institutes of Health. “They’ve got something you could almost call an epidemic on their hands.”

    Vitale and coauthors published an analysis that found for people aged 12 to 54 in the U.S., myopia appeared to increase from an average of 25% in the early 1970s to almost 42% in the early 2000s (Arch. Ophthalmol. 2009, DOI:

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  7. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

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    I did not suggest myopia is not on the increase; simply that there is no evidence (to my knowledge) that it is caused by being indoors.

    This:
    is not cause.

    Just like these are not cause:

    This creeping loss of distance vision is more advanced in developed countries, where young people drink more cola.
    This creeping loss of distance vision is more advanced in developed countries, where young people have faster cars.
    This creeping loss of distance vision is more advanced in developed countries, where young people use more emojis.

    But if you have evidence of a causal link between myopia and time spent indoors, I'm all ears.

    This graph is an extrapolation, not a statistic. Unless they have time machines.
    There's only two valid X data-points there: 2000 and 2010.
     
    Last edited: Mar 30, 2017
  8. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

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  9. Dinosaur Rational Skeptic Valued Senior Member

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    I suspect the increase in myopia is due to the many hours per day spent in grades K through 12 reading books & doing home work.

    100 thousand or more years of our evolutionary background was spent being hunter/gatherers & included little or no activity similar to reading books & writing home work papers. Our visual system was designed for that prehistoric existence & has not yet adapted to our modern civilization.
     
  10. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

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    Not that I want to lend credence tot he idea that reading can "cause" nearsightedness, but you logic is flawed.

    If the increase in myopia/nearsightedness is due to our recent habit of reading books and doing homework, that would suggest that our visual system has indeed adapted to our modern civilization (of reading books).
     
  11. birch Valued Senior Member

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    being near sighted is better than farsighted, imo. its terrible not to be able to discern details or examine anything closely. no wonder they say people with nearsightedness tend to be smarter than those who are farsighted.
     
  12. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

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    Who says that?
     
  13. exchemist Valued Senior Member

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    Blokes in glasses.

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