Where are all the blind people?

[Quoth]

When I was at school they didn't test vision for reading, only across the room vision.
Also maybe text sizes have got smaller in textbooks to save on paper & binding costs.

It's true we don't know why there is an increase in the West. Some Eastern ethnic groups tend to short sightedness, i.e. needing glass for activities other than reading.

[crane3]

I probably missed it but I do not recall whether the increase is due to the increase in population; or did the "studies" say that the increase is for same people who did not need glasses suddenly needed glasses? As it is a numbers game, wouldn't it be likely that an increase of 1 million people will have a number of the million persons needing glasses; were they counted differently.

Same goes with increase obesity, diabetes, heart problems, etc. Never saw anything of a breakout of the numbers that excluded the increase in population. Is the study finally including non-eyeglasses users who had chosen operations on their natural lenses (karatomy?) or wear contact lenses?

More health services are now available for testing both eyesight and dental issues; and more people are more concerned about their health as the services are available(?).

[jj2me]

Originally Posted by AnotherCat

You are letting yourself get confused by amateur fabricated "science", or grasping at something that suits your agenda.

The comparisons regarding the fovea only apply to looking directly a strong concentrated source of light, such as looking directly at the candle itself very close up or into a larger strong light such as a lamp. What has been described would apply, for a device example, if looking into a phone or tablet's camera's/torch high intensity flash LED.

Nothing to do with low level light emitting or reflective displays because they have comparatively large plane surfaces relatively evenly and lowly lit and in the cases of E Ink and LCD also diffused.

But like drowning men there are some who will hear nothing that is contrary to their claims of danger and will continue to try to convince people by quackery and fabricated "science" in order to support their argument. Nothing will change their minds but hopefully threads lead by a claim such the OP has stated will encourage those of more rational thought to question scaremongering claims as to the safety of displays.

Agenda? What the heck? An agenda about e-reader lighting? Weird.

Like you couldn't tell I simply had a question directed to someone who knows more than I, by, for example, that it ended in a question mark?

Nowhere did I say that LCDs are bad for eye health. To the contrary, I'm the poster child for LCDs not harming eyes, having started using CRTs extensively at work in the '70s, and still don't wear glasses.

Maybe, just maybe, I was interested in what someone more knowledgeable considers best practices for reading. Many of us like to know best practices (e.g., the popularity of cooking and home repair TV shows), even if we personally never get around to actually live up to them.

[AnotherCat]

Originally Posted by jj2me

Agenda? What the heck? An agenda about e-reader lighting? Weird.

Like you couldn't tell I simply had a question directed to someone who knows more than I, by, for example, that it ended in a question mark?

Nowhere did I say that LCDs are bad for eye health. To the contrary, I'm the poster child for LCDs not harming eyes, having started using CRTs extensively at work in the '70s, and still don't wear glasses.

Maybe, just maybe, I was interested in what someone more knowledgeable considers best practices for reading. Many of us like to know best practices (e.g., the popularity of cooking and home repair TV shows), even if we personally never get around to actually live up to them.

I suggest that you calm down before you have an apoplexy.

You said to the other poster:
I was about to give my worthless anecdote before I came upon your posts (I had no idea of this science). - bolding added by me.

I was pointing out that what you referred to as being science was not science at all, but rather just someone's mangling of "science"; and I gave a brief introductory explanation why that was so.

Perhaps someone debunking the "science" did not meet your agenda, and hence your anger. Good luck, I'll leave you to it.

[Ripplinger]

After reading all the links and reading about this topic for many years, I'm really thinking the current decline in kids' vision is more to do with them not being outside as much. Your eye muscles are constantly being used to change focus... indoors how much distance are you changing, 20' at the most? That's not very much. But outdoors your muscles really get a better workout viewing objects miles away and not just the next wall.

I think too much screen time might make your eyes feel tired, LCDs vs eink vs paper might make some not sleep as well (although neither have ever bothered me and I've had bad eyesight all my life, I'm very farsighted). I don't believe using your eyes to read a lot makes you blind or even causes any eye disease no matter what medium you read from, book or screen.

[leebase]

Aha! Thank you. There is a Myopia pandemic. Didn’t know. And what does it appear to be related too? READING and EDUCATION. The Inuits sure as heck weren’t glued to iPads. But when they started reading, they started needing glasses.

No while this eye health issue isn’t about devices...it is exactly the type of global spanning increase that would be seen if the switch from “reading anything to reading on devices” was the catalyst of the health problem.

You can’t miss such a thing. You can have trouble figuring out what a toot cause would be, but there would be a significant, work wide spanning change.

[Frenzie]

Alright, now you might try reformulating the position that there is an effect a little more sensibly.

To help you along, regular visible light has long been suspected to be damaging to eyes. In the '80s the focus was mainly on UV, but since the '90s it's been understood that regular visible violet and blue light may have similarly deleterious effects. A screen then would be a confounding factor in this hypothesis, slightly increasing the risk of long-term negative effects like cataracts, for example.

The main reason it seems implausible for blue light emitted by displays to actually have such an effect is the sheer lack of intensity compared to the sun. As far as I know there's presently no evidence that prolonged low-intensity exposure actually does anything harmful to the eye.

[meeera]

Originally Posted by Ripplinger

After reading all the links and reading about this topic for many years, I'm really thinking the current decline in kids' vision is more to do with them not being outside as much. Your eye muscles are constantly being used to change focus... indoors how much distance are you changing, 20' at the most? That's not very much. But outdoors your muscles really get a better workout viewing objects miles away and not just the next wall.

Which is what I said up above, with a bunch of cites. The distance hypothesis is the leading one at the moment, though it's far from proven. That doesn't mean that device use has absolutely nothing to do with any of it. There's a strong case to be made for ubiquitous devices leading to more kids staying inside more of the time, along with other pressures.

[Ripplinger]

Originally Posted by meeera

Which is what I said up above, with a bunch of cites. The distance hypothesis is the leading one at the moment, though it's far from proven. That doesn't mean that device use has absolutely nothing to do with any of it. There's a strong case to be made for ubiquitous devices leading to more kids staying inside more of the time, along with other pressures.

I completely agree with everything you said. The devices are leading to kids staying inside more, but there's more to it than just that. There's also the current crime rates, fear of kidnapping, etc., at least within bigger cities, leading to parents not letting kids out of their sight like they used to. My parents were pretty strict about where we were allowed to go, curfew, home for dinner, it's not like we were left to run wild. But the first thing we'd do is go outside with friends, every single day, and come inside for just lunch and dinner. It's a completely different mindset today that keeps kids indoors for their safety, you can't blame it just on electronic gadgets.

The lack of being outdoors and using your focus muscles to the fullest really makes the most sense to me.

[jj2me]

Originally Posted by AnotherCat

I suggest that you calm down before you have an apoplexy.

You said to the other poster:
I was about to give my worthless anecdote before I came upon your posts (I had no idea of this science). - bolding added by me.

I was pointing out that what you referred to as being science was not science at all, but rather just someone's mangling of "science"; and I gave a brief introductory explanation why that was so.

Perhaps someone debunking the "science" did not meet your agenda, and hence your anger. Good luck, I'll leave you to it.

Still with the agenda ("did not meet your agenda"), even after my denials ("weird," 40 years of close backlighting work and no glasses [isn't it clear that I would lean towards thinking that LCDs rarely if ever deteriorate vision except possibly to a very tiny degree, or to a very special population, given my personal experience?]).

Your red herring is that you addressed my objections by saying you "were pointing out ...." But that came packaged in a needlessly insulting and presumptuous post ascribing to me an agenda and implying that I'm not among "those of more rational thought." It's a red herring because those insults are what I addressed; I addressed nothing about your statements about the science, and have no inclination or knowledge to doubt those statements.

Your cheap rhetorical trick is to deflect criticism of your bad behavior by ascribing something like hysteria to me ("calm down" "apoplexy" "anger").

Here it is clearly:
1. I have no agenda. You've ascribed this possibility to me even after my explanations to the contrary.
2. I don't know eye science, and was just asking an innocent question. I am happy to learn more with the hints you gave, though I'm developing a distaste for this subject.
3. Please stop trolling me with your condescending and unpleasant imputations and insults. That shouldn't be too much to ask.

[ekbell]

I've been reading the speculation on what causes nearsightedness with some interest. I have spent most of my life with one near-sighted eye and one 'normal' eye.

At some point I had ended up favoring the near sighted eye for my nearly constant reading to the extent that I didn't actually realize when my 'normal' eye was too far-sighted to read without correction.

The idea that I had started favoring that eye for reading early on and that was the reason for the difference in eyesight makes more sense to me then most other explanations.

If so it certainly wasn't screen time as I didn't spend much time looking at screens until after my eyes had changed.

[meeera]

Originally Posted by Ripplinger

I completely agree with everything you said. The devices are leading to kids staying inside more, but there's more to it than just that. There's also the current crime rates, fear of kidnapping, etc., at least within bigger cities, leading to parents not letting kids out of their sight like they used to.

I'd put it more as escalating fear of crime rather than the crime rates themselves. Violent crime has been decreasing for several decades, and there is no epidemic of kidnapping. There is, in some countries, an epidemic of excessive parent-blaming and even parent-criminalisation for unsupervised kids, and on top of that, reduced numbers of children in public leads to perceptions that things are less safe.

(I have a teenager, and have tended toward fairly free-range parenting myself since he was eight or nine, albeit with him keeping a smartphone on his person. Very happy with that decision, as it turns out.)

[Ripplinger]

I agree, there are many reasons kids just aren't outdoors as much today, it can't be blamed any one thing. But as someone who lived in Chicago most of my life, in my case it was definitely real crime rates, not just an irrational safety fear.

[AnotherCat]

Originally Posted by jj2me

...3. Please stop trolling me with your condescending and unpleasant imputations and insults...

The guidelines for these forums state:

"Name calling is not permitted, even in the form of a question, e.g. "X's posts make me wonder how much he believes what he's saying, or if he's just a troll."

In some other forums calling or inferring another poster is trolling or is a troll would result in one being banned.

[AnotherCat]

Originally Posted by Ripplinger

After reading all the links and reading about this topic for many years, I'm really thinking the current decline in kids' vision is more to do with them not being outside as much. Your eye muscles are constantly being used to change focus... indoors how much distance are you changing, 20' at the most? That's not very much. But outdoors your muscles really get a better workout viewing objects miles away and not just the next wall...

This is something that I have wondered about too and I have seen it mentioned informally elsewhere. I wonder if there has been any reliable research done.