How about until I need glasses?
TV talking heads whine that 41 percent of Americans now exhibit some signs of myopia, versus 25 in the 1970s, though they stop short of demanding that Something Must Be Done Now.
The culprit is something they’ve dubbed “near-work,” which is not as to work what near-beer is to beer; it simply means something close in, as opposed to at the sort of distance they’d evidently prefer.
I have my doubts. For one thing, visual acuity measurements are predicated on the existence of a standard or “average” visual acuity, and averages are subject to change. For another, I’ve been glued to a keyboard for approximately a quarter of a century, and the prescription for eyeglasses I got in 2008 is essentially identical to the prescription I got in 1978; I suffer a bit more eye fatigue now than I did then, but I’m not getting any more nearsighted.
DRJ suggests that something else might be at work here:
[W]hile my baseline is probably association rather than causation, I’m not ruling out that our bodies and eyes are mutating more quickly to make it easier for us to do the ‘near work’ that is such a big part of our lives.
I’m willing to entertain this as a possibility, though I suspect it will be a while before any of this shows up as a regular genome feature, what with half my grandchildren already bespectacled.
Brian J. »
18 December 2009 · 6:55 am
So people who do close work get laid and beget more?
Uh.
CGHill »
18 December 2009 · 7:10 am
I offer, um, anecdotal evidence to the contrary.
Mark Alger »
18 December 2009 · 8:56 am
“Guys don’t make passes at girls who wear glasses”? I would beg to differ.
I’ve always sort-of assumed that the population has always been pretty much as near- or far-sighted as we are now. Since-God-was-a-little-boy kind of always.
The change is that, as eyeglasses became less expensive (in terms of purchasing power, at least: my first pair cost $12.50 — remember them? The Lenscrafters of the ’60s?), more people started getting them.
And, of course, unless you think you can afford glasses, why bother getting your eyes checked, so you should know you’re myopic? (Senator Leghorn, call your office.)
Which, I’ve ALSO always thought, might explain things like stories of ghost sightings and little people in the flowerbeds. And why such sightings have tapered off. If your eyes can resolve what they see clearly, your imagination might fill in all sorts of phantasms. Once you have those lenses over your eyes, the spectre you saw out of the corner of the left one suddenly resolves into the reflection of a cloud off a window.
Funny How That Works.
M
ms7168 »
18 December 2009 · 9:16 am
My prescription has gotten progressively stronger in the same period and the Doctors are scratching their heads as to why. They theorize it comes from sitting in front of a computer all day. I had the least amount of change on the latest one which was the first part of this year. Prior to that the previous prescription came from 2005. I am supposed to see them yearly. As you can tell I don’t.