Evidence for Chinese view that video games cause childhood myopia is lacking, doctors say

A blight of bad eyesight plagues   cities in China and other East Asian countries. In Hong Kong and Singapore, the rate of myopia, or nearsightedness, is as high as 90 per cent in young adults.

Though things aren’t as blurry in the United States – about a third of the population has trouble seeing distant objects – rates have doubled since the 1970s. If current trends continue, half of the world could be myopic by 2050.

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China blames video games for the epidemic and recently took them to task. The state-run Xinhua News Agency wrote this week that the “vision health of our country’s young people has always been of great concern” to Xi Jinping, the Communist Party general secretary and China’s president. Chinese media distributors,   according to media reports, will limit the number of new games approved for sale.

By singling out video games, China has taken a somewhat “extreme stance”, according to Aaron Miller, a paediatric ophthalmologist and a clinical spokesman for the American Academy of Ophthalmology. “There’s not a direct correlation or a clear relationship between video games, screen time and nearsightedness development.”

The scientific literature can offer only a fuzzy picture of myopia’s causes. Diet and genes influence myopia; myopic parents are more likely to have myopic children. Behaviours can play a role, too.

Some ophthalmologists look to activities lumped together under a term called “near-work” – any prolonged focus on a nearby object, as when reading, checking phones, studying and, yes, watching screens. Researchers have observed higher rates of myopia in college students, post-literate societies and, in one study, people who frequently use microscopes.