Research Projects

The COVID-19 lockdown and home confinement have led to a significant increase in digital devices and screen time, causing negative impacts on physical, mental, and eye health. This includes dry and tired eyes, blurred vision, and an increase in myopia, a concern. Studies have reported an increase in myopia progression in children during the lockdown due to increased screen time and restricted outdoor activity. Accommodation is the key factor linking near work and myopia, with several accommodative parameters changing before and after sustained near work on paper media and digital devices. Sustained near point activities may cause a temporary shift in the refractive state towards myopia, known as Near work Induced Transient Myopia (NITM). NITM dissipates after cessation of the near task, but if it doesn't dissipate completely, residual NITM may accumulate with repetitive near tasks and eventually lead to permanent myopia. The proposed study aims to investigate NITM in children and adolescents under five different mobile viewing conditions: normal settings with 50% or 100% screen illumination, bedtime mode with 50% or 100% screen illumination, blue filter mode with 50% or 100% screen illumination, laptop viewing with 50% or 100% screen illumination, and tablet viewing with 50% or 100% screen illumination. Eligible participants will be randomly assigned to one of the reading conditions, and baseline refractive error will be measured using Dynamic Open field Auto refractor. The magnitude of NITM and decay time pre-task and post-task will be compared within each viewing condition and in-between conditions.