Blue Light and Children’s Hidden Eye Strain
By: Dr. Livia Derdova of Precision Eye Care of NJ
There is no doubt in my mind that blue light and increased time on electronic devices has some major side effects in our children’s’ eyes. We see many of our children patients squinting, rubbing their eyes, getting dry eyes, headaches and loosing focus in school or doing poorly in school. According to The Review of Optometry and other medical journals we found that children are at the highest risk of getting the worst side effects when it comes to blue light exposure or near work. We are now prescribing more reading glasses for children for school work to not only help them with relaxing their eyes but to prevent them from needing distance glasses in the future.
Many school vision screenings don’t focus on the eye muscles and cannot measure accurately the issues your child might be facing. By scheduling a routine eye checkup with an eye doctor, we can detect many of these issues and help them for the future. Some children might not even know that they are straining until it’s too late. School screenings often miss some major eye issues which only an eye care professional can pick up just on one eye exam.
I have personally noticed that children who never needed glasses now are developing myopia (nearsightedness), which is very common when we train our brain and eyes to focus at near. It is very important to reduce the time on electronic devices for many other reasons other than just developing myopia. We live in the world of electronics and it is not going away. That’s why it is important to reduce the time on these devices when we can. We need to help our kids with their blue light exposure by protecting them with proper eye wear. Blue light protection can not only help your child focus better in school but also help them not get any eye disease that is related to blue light exposure such as macular degeneration. Just remember that not all blue light glasses are equal. Meaning online markets have taken over this matter by offering blue lights at very low price, but we have tested these glasses and what we found out that there was no blue light protection at all. Just warning parents to be cautious and only buy glasses from a professional.
Choose Precision Eye Care of NJ for your child’s next eye exam. Help your child see better, help them succeed and strain less. Call 732-842-9177
Precision Eye Care of NJ
370 Highway 35, Suite 202
Red Bank, NJ 07701
732-842-9177
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