How Can You Protect Your Kid’s Eyes from Digital Eye Strain?

Are you worried about your kid’s extensive screen time? Read on to know how to curtail the damage it does to their tender eyesight.

Technology is omnipresent in every aspect of life these days. A kid’s life is no exception. They learn online. They play online. Their entertainment is mostly online, for example, YouTube videos. The screen is the new best friend for kids these days.

But all this convenience and fun comes with a cost. Digital eye strain is a new age eye-related health issue in kids. And it is not a single issue but an army of problems together.

What Is Digital Eye Strain?

Digital eye strain is caused due to constant viewing of the screen. As the internet and electronic devices diversified their reach, more and more kids got exposed to this problem.

It is a combination of various eye health issues:

Blurred Vision

Blurred vision is the loss of sharpness of eyesight. Everything your child see will appear hazy and out of focus if you are suffering from blurry vision.

Dry or Itchy Eye

Eyes get dry when they don’t produce enough tears. Thus, because of lack of moisture, your kid’s eyes get dry and itchy. There can be some chemical imbalance in tears as well. This happens due to prolonged exposure to the screen.

Burning Pain in Eyes

Burning pain in the eyes can be a result of dry eyes or any inflammation. Your child can also get it if something gets in their eyes by mistake. Your Doctor will be able to tell you the actual cause of the issue is digital eye strain or anything else.

Lack of Focus

The optical power of the eyes gets weaken due to digital eye strain. It decreases their ability to focus on anything for even a few seconds.

Neck or Shoulder Pain

Pain in the neck and shoulder is a posture issue. It happens when your kid works on a PC for a long time but his or her posture is not right.

Headaches

The strain on the eyes will ultimately get to the head. Your kids might feel a severe headache after a few hours of working on the PC if they don’t take short breaks in between.

Eye Fatigue

Eye fatigue is a combination of dry and burning eyes. Your child can also face teary eyes because of eye fatigue. They will feel difficulty in concentrating. The pain in the eyes can also spread to your shoulders, neck, back, and cause headaches.

Short Sightedness

It is one of the severe problems caused due to digital eye syndrome, known as myopia in medical terms. Short-sightedness affects adults also along with kids. The focus of light on the retina gets disturbed. The affected person will be able to see close objects. Whereas, the distant object will appear blurry.

Various renowned eye expert sees these phenomena as a threat to the wellbeing of kid’s eyes. All these eye issues can be prevented by taking good care of the eyes. We will explain further how to keep working on a PC without suffering from digital eye strain.

How to Care

Take a Break!

Often kids don’t take any breaks from their screen if they are enjoying what they are watching. They are also not mature enough to recognize the symptoms of their eyes getting tired. Therefore, problems like eye fatigue, dry eyes, and blurry vision are rapidly increasing amongst children.

Screen breaks will relax their eyes muscles. It will take off the toll on their focus for at least some time.

1. Recommend your kids to take a 5 minutes screen break after every 30 minutes. It will help their overall health if they move around or at least stand for those 5 minutes.
2. Try the golden 20:20:20 rule. You can advise them to see 20 feet away after every 20 minutes for at least 20 seconds.

What is Your (Parents) Role?

1. The pain in the neck and shoulder is unrelated to their vision. But it can be very troublesome in the future. Teach them the right posture. Give them some rewards if they keep moving their neck and shoulders after every half an hour.
2. You should make sure that the screen is below their eye level. If the screen is above their eye level, the air will dry their eyes more quickly.
3. Computer eyewear forms a protecting layer between the eyes and screen. There is a unique variety of eyewear which are blue light protection glasses. Get them fancy computer eyewear which they can flaunt to everyone. This way, you will make sure that they wear them all the time.
4. Maintain the text size at an optimum level for them. It will be worse if they zoom in to the screen to see anything.
5. Establish a time at your home when no gadgets can be used (preferably a few hours before bedtime). Spend that time chatting and playing with them.
6. Early detection of any health issue gives Doctor an edge to cure it. The same is true for the health of your child’s eye—schedule routine eye exam as prescribed by your trusted eye doctor.

Take Away!

When you are dealing with kids, it is vital to make the rules engaging and interesting. Their screen breaks should feel like fun to them. It will help if they understand the logic of restriction on screen time.

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