Each hour a person spends squinting into a smartphone or staring at a screen increases their risk of nearsightedness, a new evidence review suggests.
Every daily one-hour increment in digital screen time is associated with 21% higher odds of myopia, researchers reported recently in JAMA Network Open.
What’s more, the risk continues to increase as more time each day is spent with screens, researchers found.
“Myopia risk increased significantly from 1 to 4 hours of screen time and then rose more gradually thereafter,” the research team led by Young Kook Kim, an associate professor of ophthalmology with the Seoul National University College of Medicine in South Korea, wrote.
