Is COVID-19 Contributing To People Losing Their Eyesight?

Before COVID-19 I had 20/20 vision my whole life.

But once COVID-19 started and we wee stuck in quarantine with nothing to do I began to notice that I was having trouble reading digital things, such as clocks.

I was not quite sure what the cause was as I had two possible reasons that could have caused this. The first one being that I started accutane for my acne about 8 months ago and apparently vision loss is one of the side effects. The second option was that my vision had started to go because I had been looking at screen way more than I did before quarantine. I was studying for the LSAT every day on my laptop, playing video games (which I never did before), watching shows/movies, and going on my phone more than I ever had before because I simply had nothing else to do.

So I went to the eye doctor and sure enough I needed glasses for when I felt my vision going when I was looking at digital things. The doctor told me that it was not due to my accutane, because if it was then both of my eyes would have trouble seeing, where only my left eye seemed to be having trouble.

This lead me to conclude that it was indeed my increased screen time that has lead me to needing glasses, so I asked one of the people in the eye center if many people have been coming in due to staying inside because of COVID-19 and she said that many people had been. She said people are working from their laptops more than ever since they are at home and people in general just have more time to be inside and just go on electronics.

Now of course I have no physical evidence to support this claim and it is just something that I am speculating, but I do believe that COVID-19 forcing people to quarantine has lead to vision loss for some.

So what can we do to help prevent this? Well for starters just because there is a pandemic, it does not mean that you can't go outside at all. Workout in your back yard or just play outside with your pets. Just find other ways to have fun that don't involve technology!

Also, if you are sitting in front of a computer all day for work be sure to take breaks when you can to give your eyes a rest.

While we can not do anything about the fact that we should be staying inside more, that does not mean we have to succumb to increasing our screen time like crazy.