It has long been thought that digging your nose in a book and spending too much time reading things up close could cause near-sightedness. When books were replaced with smartphones, it was easy to blame the screens instead. But as near-sightedness rates continued to rise across the world, researchers began to understand that it wasn’t just technology that was changing the way we see the world.
Near-sightedness, formally known as myopia, occurs when the eye elongates, causing light to focus in front of the retina instead of directly on it, producing blurry vision. Rates of myopia are increasing globally, with the World Health Organization estimating that half of the world’s population could have myopia by 2050 in what is already being called an epidemic. As of 2010, just 27% of the global population has myopia.
