{"id":201708,"date":"2021-03-14T03:45:56","date_gmt":"2021-03-14T00:45:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/nyc-sees-spike-in-kids-with-myopia-amid-increased-screen-time\/"},"modified":"2021-03-14T03:45:56","modified_gmt":"2021-03-14T00:45:56","slug":"nyc-sees-spike-in-kids-with-myopia-amid-increased-screen-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/nyc-sees-spike-in-kids-with-myopia-amid-increased-screen-time\/","title":{"rendered":"#NYC sees spike in kids with myopia amid increased screen time"},"content":{"rendered":"

“#NYC sees spike in kids with myopia amid increased screen time<\/strong>”<\/p>\n

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Doctors are sounding a warning for parents with grade-school kids who rub their eyes frequently, squint or complain of blurry vision. <\/p>\n

That\u2019s because they could be showing symptoms of myopia, or nearsightedness, which is surging right among elementary students because of all the screen time they\u2019re racking up during lockdown. \u00a0<\/p>\n

Jamie Melisi took her 7-year-old daughter Juliana in for an eye exam after she noticed the second-grader wasn\u2019t acting like herself, especially right after a day of remote learning.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe was squinting a lot and suffering headaches,\u201d Melisi, of Staten Island, told The Post.<\/p>\n

Juliana, who attends public school, lucked out and didn\u2019t need glasses, but Melisi had to lay down the law: The laptop was for schoolwork only.<\/p>\n

At Pediatric Ophthalmic Consultants, a private practice on the Upper West Side, pediatric ophthalmologist\u00a0Dr. Milan Ranka sees patients as young as Juliana who do need specs because of their long stretches of close-up work. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s surprising,\u201d Ranka told The Post. \u201cWe\u2019re seeing nearsightedness in the lower grade levels throughout now \u2014 even in first-, second- and third-graders \u2014 and we never saw that before.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"nyc
Dr. Milan Ranka, a city-based ophthalmologist, is seeing younger cases of nearsightedness. <\/figcaption>
Helayne Seidman<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The uptick is what Ranka considers an offshoot of a surge in tweens and teens that started roughly a decade ago, when the first tablets and smartphones hit stores. <\/p>\n

Like the elementary kids today, the junior high and high school students talked to Ranka about blurry vision, double vision, headaches and difficulty reading. Being stressed out and not getting enough sleep can be factors, too. <\/p>\n

\u201cThese complaints aren\u2019t abnormal in high school or even junior high \u2014 they are under more pressure and they are sleeping less,\u201d he said, \u201cbut we\u2019re not used to hearing the same things from younger kids.\u201d<\/p>\n

Optician Sam Pirozzolo is filling more eyeglass prescript<\/a>ions for nearsightedness at his Steinway Eye Care Centers in Queens, and he understands why after he hears parents tell him the same story over and over: Their kids roll out of bed and plop down in front of their computers for as many as 18 hours, going to school or playing game<\/a>s \u2014 often without a light on.<\/p>\n

\u201cNow, they\u2019re in a dark room, not looking out the window, not looking across the room, focusing on a distance 2 feet away \u2014 all day, seven days a week,\u201d Pirozzolo told The Post. <\/p>\n

\"nyc
Jamie Melisi tells The Post her daughter, Juliana, 7, \u201cwas squinting a lot and suffering headaches.\u201d <\/figcaption>
James Keivom<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

And the phenomenon is happening in other cities in lockdown, an Emory University study shows.<\/a> In China\u2019s Feicheng, population 1 million, schools screened 123,535 boys and girls \u2014 first- through sixth-graders \u2014 after six months in quarantine and found the myopia rate for the 6-, 7- and 8-year-olds had skyrocketed. The biggest rate increase was for the first-graders \u2014 from roughly six percent to nearly 22 percent. <\/p>\n

Preventing or keeping myopia from progressing is key since the condition can lead to more serious eye ailments later in life such as cataracts and glaucoma, both Ranka and Pirozzolo said.<\/p>\n

Ranka\u2019s tips include upping your laptop\u2019s contrast and print size, and looking at bigger screens farther away for movies<\/a> and games. And during class or work, he likes the 20-20-20 rule: For every 20 minutes of close-up activity, look 20 feet away for 20 seconds.<\/p>\n

For Pirozzolo, the best medicine for kids will be for life to get back to normal: \u201cGoing back to school would be a good thing for every kid\u2019s eyes.\u201d\n <\/p><\/div>\n

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Source<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“#NYC sees spike in kids with myopia amid increased screen time” Doctors are sounding a warning for parents with grade-school kids who rub their eyes frequently, squint or complain of blurry vision. That\u2019s because they could be showing symptoms of myopia, or nearsightedness, which is surging right among elementary students because of all the screen…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":201709,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/nypost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2021\/02\/Juliana-Melisi-myopia-2.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&w=1200","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[70897],"tags":[97589,1545,2243,94060,70603],"class_list":["post-201708","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-3-13-21","tag-coronavirus","tag-doctors","tag-eyes","tag-remote-learning"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201708","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=201708"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201708\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/201709"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=201708"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=201708"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=201708"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}