A Saskatoon optometrist said she’s seen something new in her patients – more children are displaying symptoms of dry eye.
Dry eye is a condition where a person doesn’t produce enough tears to lubricate their eyes. Symptoms include burning, stinging, itchiness and dryness.
“With kids, we see a lot more dry eye now. In the past we didn’t see it very much,” Dorothy Barrie, an optometrist at InVision Eye Care, told CTV News.
The condition typically occurs in people about 50 to 60 years old.
Barrie blames too much time in front of screens for the child diagnoses.
“With the use of computers or phones, we see a lot of kids with problems related to dry eye and the issue is they don’t blink,” Barrie said.
A study conducted in Korea supports Barrie’s observation. It found the more time kids stare at smartphones, the higher chance they’d display dry eye symptoms.
“They’re finding that when kids are using their electronic devices they’re typically staring at them so the blink pattern becomes less frequent, their blinks are less complete,” optometrist Joseph Chan told CTV’s Your Morning.
“The things that you need to watch out for in children are symptoms like gritty eyes, sandy tired eyes, if your child is rubbing their eyes a lot, if they’re complaining of soreness.”
The Canadian Association of Optometrists outlines screen time guidelines for children.
Kids two to five years old are advised to only spend about one hour per day looking at a screen.
Children five to 18 should only spend about two hours a day looking at a screen, according to the association.
