The Pandemic Isn’t Good for Your Eyeballs
Screen eyes are tired eyes. So what to do about it?
I’d never thought of my childrens’ six underage eyeballs as “plump” until Manoush Zomorodi prompted me to in her recent piece about the tricky ways quarantine behaviors are impacting eyesight. Her description conjured a creepy haunted house moment from elementary school days — my hand plunged into a bowl of perfectly round peeled grapes.
The image is apt. By design, eyeballs are round and — as Robert Roy Britt reports for Elemental — nearsighted ones (like mine) are elongated. Can’t say I love the thought of carrying around misshapen eyeballs in my skull, but then again what human body part doesn’t morph as its functionality shifts or diminishes?
The question Zomorodi (who by the way hosts the TED Radio Hour when she isn’t reflecting on eyeballs) raises is what can we do to keep our kids’ eyesight from rapidly dwindling, given all the givens of late: Zoom school, social distancing, and the reign of screens?
A few things, it turns out.
Getting kids (and ourselves) outside is crucial. My favorite way to do that is to hike and run in a nearby forest — taking Minecraft with us in conversation…
