The big bad screen—and the little bad screen that’s even worse—part 1

One of the special pleasures of being Australian is driving down the long stretches of country roads and seeing into the far distance. Indeed this is one of the many benefits which our children have inherited—the vastness of our beautiful home.

Driving is more pleasurable if your eyesight is good. This is because sharp vision allows you to drive faster, and what young person doesn’t want to drive quickly, allowing hundreds of kilometres to pass under the rhythm of the wheels. But if young people have to wear glasses because they are short sighted their driving pleasure is lessened. A young 25-year-old driver should in theory be able to drive at speed, on a moon lit night without using the lights. The road should appear almost as visible as during the day—that’s what good eyesight means.

Now however short sightedness, or myopia, is becoming increasingly common among young people. In Asian countries the situation is so bad it’s almost unbelievable. In Seoul, South Korea, some 95 per cent of 19-year-old boys need to wear glasses because of myopia. According to an article by Chris Smith, published recently in The Australian newspaper, researchers found that 30 per cent of six-year-olds in Singapore need glasses, and in Britain the figure is 23 per cent of 12 and 13-year-olds. In China students fare quite badly, with about 40 to 80 per cent of students in urban areas having myopia.

Here in Australia the situation is much better. One study found that less than two per cent of Australian children starting school have myopia. At the beginning of high school this rises to about seven per cent, and by university about 30 per cent of Australian children have myopia. Most commonly, myopia starts to develop when children are in Year 1 to Year 3. While we are doing much better than Asian countries we should not be taking our eyesight for granted. It could and should be better.

Causes of myopia

There is an increasing volume of research into myopia but because it’s very difficult to gain accurate information on exactly what children do with their eyes, and collect this information over a number of years, research conclusions differ. Most studies however place the blame on children spending too much time indoors.

Chinese children spend long hours studying. In Singapore children are outside for less than half an hour a day. Australian children at the moment seem to spend two hours a day outside. Spending time outside means in the sunlight, and as a factor this is more important than the time spent on the computer screen, or reading for that matter. An Australian study found that three hours per day is required to achieve a level of protection against myopia.

Researchers agree less on the effects of using a computer screen. Some studies find no significant difference, while other experts in the field suggest that the risk is only slight, and there would need to be extensive computer screen use to produce negative effects. This might, it is hypothesised, have something to do with the constant contraction of eye muscles, at a constant distance. Books it would seem are not as bad as the distance between the eyes and the book changes from time to time.

Which brings me to the next point—the danger of smartphones. Even young children are using these devices, and very often holding them very close to their faces, perhaps less than 30 cm, which compares very unfavourably with book reading. Books are usually held from at least 40 cm from the eyes. Children can be spending one to two hours a day staring at smartphones. Some eye health professionals are now suggesting that smart phones will help achieve a myopia rate of up to 30 to 40 per cent, by the time students reach 30 years old.

If all this is not bad enough optometrists are now warning that phone and computer screens emit ‘blue light’ which could damage children’s eyes over time. An excessive dose of blue light is apparently cumulative leading to changes to the back of the retina. Young children have very clear lenses inside their eyes which allow “a lot of blue light to pass through” (see Clarissa Bye, Blinded by blue light, Daily Telegraph, 12 Nov 2016, p. 32). We can expect that from now on more research studies will be carried out.

Four rules for eye health

All these studies and results are easily available. While there is some disagreement among researchers the basic advice for children, especially young children is as follows. (1) Children need at least two to three hours out in good sunlight per day. It’s the brightness of the light which is important. (2) Screen time, especially with young children, needs to be kept as little as possible, actually in my opinion close to zero. Many things that are presently learned on computer screens can also be learned with pencil and paper. (3) Where the computer screen is being used it needs to be as far away from the eyes as is comfortable. The head should not be tilted up or down (4) Children need to give their eyes a break from looking at the screen. Opinions differ here but at least once or twice an hour children should be looking outside into the far distance, for say 1 to 10 minutes. This gives the eyes a rest.

The research findings concerning children’s eye health have implications for what happens at school, and how home work is set and done. Children should be given time outside for physical education, but too often this is the subject area which is cut in order to cope with an increasingly crowded curriculum. Parents must make up this time if necessary.

The need for outdoor time and the dangers of computer screen overuse means that less homework needs to be set. It is vital that young children do a limited amount of home work and there are quite a number of educational reasons for this as well as eyesight considerations.

Part 2

Part two of this article on screen problems is concerned with the negative effects on children’s brains and on their educational performance. Today students of all ages are spending very large amounts of time playing on the Internet, using computer games, and communicating in different ways with social media. Of course there is no doubt that these improvements in the power of information processing and communication are quite staggering.

School and university libraries started getting serious about computers from about the 1980s—and that’s not so long ago.

Before computerisation any type of information search was a physical process. Let’s say you wanted 12 academic journal articles, a fairly modest request these days. Well you had to travel to the university library. Then you would start going through the card catalogue and various indexes, perhaps one or even three indexes for each year that you might be interested in. You would need to check the journal holdings of your particular library, and then it would be off to the shelves, and so on. This might take three or more hours, and even then you might find that half the journal articles you don’t like.

Today’s university students, still in their pyjamas at home, can simply enter key words into their laptop search engine, press enter, and bingo, there are dozens of a suitable journal articles to review. These articles can be downloaded into the student’s own computer and so on. The whole process is over in minutes, and not only that the student has done a much better job. Today The University of Sydney can provide electronic access to 100,000 journals. Indeed each year students and staff download about nine million articles. This is digital power, and it will continue to get even better.

Random hyper-stimulation can encourage boredom

There is however a negative side with computers and the Internet. Not everyone is becoming more knowledgeable and better educated, in fact some students are almost going backwards. One of the main problems is that on the Internet users are constantly jumping about, being spoon fed with choices, and this can produce scattered and superficial thinking, and robotic response processes.

Computer games especially reward young students for simply clicking on this and clicking on that. A recent government report into student use of computers found that when Year Six children use the computer at home it was mostly for playing games, not searching for information or learning digital skills. There can be craving and addiction. Some children will even play video games until their eyes begin to hurt and then remarkably carry on after that. In South Korea three per cent of students are said to be seriously addicted to the Internet and a number of students have actually died from exhaustion, heart failure or deep-vein thrombosis from non-stop Internet gaming. They are certainly dedicated!

As the years roll on it is likely that we will be hearing more about this type of effect on the mind. It is too early really to establish whether or not there are any lasting effects on the brains of young children. At present writers in the area are suggesting that these effects occur only with very intensive computer use.

Powerful virtual experience can become a substitute for the real thing, which means that for some children the real thing can be boring. For some very few children an overuse of the Internet and social media can lead to a weakening of a sense of identity and even to feelings of loneliness. Additionally, students who spend long periods of time playing on the Internet and using video games, display boredom and distraction in the classroom. They want everything to be entertaining and instantly satisfying and controllable. They lack the deep concentration and engagement that is necessary for true education. Not surprisingly the students find reading books almost impossible because they lack the imagination and mental discipline. The Internet constantly scatters their attention so the focus of a book or information article is unendurable. Researchers have found that students who pride themselves on their ability to multitask and jump around on the computer actually perform worse on cognitive and learning tasks when compared with students who spend less time on computers.

Does computer use improve educational outcomes?

You might think that computers can improve students’ educational performance. For some cognitive tasks and knowledge processing this is the case. But very often inappropriate and intensive use of the computer results in a weakening of students’ ability to learn and remember. Short and simplified internet text for example does not improve reading or study skills. Text messaging can be even worse as language structures are modified and degraded. The complex language structures are missing and this doesn’t help the brain engage in extended thought.

All this especially applies to students listening to material and taking notes. Research has found that students who handwrite have improved knowledge retention and learning, and this applies both to schoolchildren and university students. Handwriting makes connections with the brain. Thus for most students handwriting a first or second draft of their essays will probably produce a better result. Of course for students who write essays by cutting and pasting information the result is nearly always worse.

Surveys show that Australian children spend a remarkable amount of time using computers and playing on the Internet. In this country some teenagers are spending hours on the Internet before or after school. These same children are also making very intensive use of their mobile phones, unlocking them and having short conversations or text messaging, literally dozens of times a day. In general once Internet usage goes above say five or six hours a day then negative social and emotional effects may be noticed by teachers and parents.

Unfortunately schools are increasingly relying on computers for education. Private schools in particular can run very fast intranets. Students access information, and also receive and submit home work through wireless laptops. No more can students say they didn’t get or lost the homework sheet. Some schools at the senior level bombard students with so much information that there can be negative effects on students’ ability to process that information, learn content and write effectively. All this is made worse because many schools don’t effectively teach students how to use the computer to organise, retrieve and use the information.

What makes this information organisation problem more entrenched is that many students simply cannot read quickly or well enough. This is because they do not read books. This is a hidden problem. Ironically then the best preparation for effective use of information technology is solid reading and writing, not time spent on the computer. Teaching methods such as rote learning and drill prepare for the digital century. Spending time outside and physical activity are also required.