(WTOP) — For Christine Wildsoet, a professor of vision science and optometry at the University of California–Berkeley, the coffee shop hosts some of the worst offenders. There are the new moms chatting while their babies are parked in front of iPads, and the dads reading while their toddlers play games on cellphones.
“I just don’t know what the implications of new technology [are] going to be” on kids’ eyesight, says Wildsoet, who studies myopia, or nearsightedness, a condition experts say is beginning earlier in life, worsening later in life and rising to epidemic levels worldwide.
“There’s a major lifestyle shift that’s been brewing over the last 30 years,” including kids and adults doing more close-up work and spending more time indoors, says Mark Jacquot, clinical director of vision care at LensCrafters. “This is contributing to a reduced ability to focus on things farther away, which is essentially myopia.”
