Smartphones are making Indian kids myopic, numbers double in a decade

Myopia, also known as near-sightedness and short-sightedness, is a condition of the eye where the light that comes in does not directly focus on the retina but in front of it, causing the image that one sees when looking at a distant object to be out of focus.

Over 13% of the school-going children in India have turned myopic, an AIIMS study has revealed, adding that the number has doubled in the last decade due to excess usage of electronic gadgets. According to the Rajendra Prasad Center for Opthalmic Sciences at AIIMS, the statistics for the disorder a decade ago was only 7%. Among the other nations which follow the increase in the problem among its children are China, Singapore and Thailand.

Myopia, also known as near-sightedness and short-sightedness, is a condition of the eye where the light that comes in does not directly focus on the retina but in front of it, causing the image that one sees when looking at a distant object to be out of focus. It does not affect focus when looking at a close object.

Read: How to keep your child’s eyes healthy

“Very less studies have been done in India on the eye related problems and the myopia one is one of them. We are also conducting a national survey to find out the other eye related problems among the children,” said Atul Kumar, head of the RP center, the apex eye centre of India.

Established in 1967, as the National Institute of Opthalmology, RP center currently has 41 faculty members working in its 14 clinical and para clinical sections.

Speaking about the center, Jeewan Singh Titiyal, opthalmology professor at AIIMS said: “ Till now 1, 400 corneas were retrieved through voluntary eye donation and hospital cornea retrieval programme. Over 950 corneal transplant surgeries were performed at RP center since its establishment.”