heh. easier to cause random outrage "think of the children" to escalate State influence than to address the problem that parents have no time or means to properly raise their kids. bonus points for the children eyesight falacy, as studies already proved its mostly caused by reading/studing long hours in poor light.
> studies already proved its mostly caused by reading/studing long hours in poor light.
Huh, I thought the current prevailing theory was that it was caused by lack of bright daylight, not by too much reading or to many hours in dim light. So a certain number of hours outside a day should have a protective effect.
I would have thought it was obvious that it's not the lack of bright daylight, but the lack of far away objects to focus on indoors. And this would clearly be exacerbated by constantly focusing on objects 12 inches away, like screens and books.
"Properly raising their kids" in this situation means installing timer controls into videogames, something that needs to be forced by the state because videogame publishers will never do such a thing willingly.
or having the means to spend time with the kids, or enabling sports or a club, etc. only the poor is raised by adictive video games. It's is the new generation version of a poor woman pushing a stroller with an 6+yr old kid in just becuase she has no means to leave the grown kid home when she have to leave.
> bonus points for the children eyesight falacy, as studies already proved its mostly caused by reading/studing long hours in poor light.
Nothing to do with reading or studying (i.e. "eye strain"); it's purely the poor light.
Facts for fun, from what studies I've read on the subject:
Photosensitive retinal ganglion cells produce dopamine when they're struck with daylight-like light levels; this dopamine affects the flexion of the musculature around the eye, which in turn affects the shape of the eye as the eye, those muscles, and the bones of the skull all develop and grow together (the muscle under flexion "reserves" more space for itself, so less is filled with bone, and so, when relaxed, it allows the eyeball to expand.)
The human body has evolved to assume this effect, and so the eyeball develops into a "normal" shape only under the presence of this chronic photo-mediated local dopamine release. Without it, the eye develops into a more ellipsoidal shape, distorting the cornea.
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One thing I haven't been able to glean from these studies is what light level qualifies as "daylight-like." Do the photosensitive RGCs activate only under full sunlight (~100K lux); with shaded sunlight (~10K lux); on overcast days (~1K lux)?
My own hypothesis is that the limit lies somewhere between "shade" and "overcast", since a lack of photosensitive RGC stimulation leading to a lack of SCN-mediated dopamine release to the brain generally, is a good explanation for Seasonal Affective Disorder; and—more anecdotally—the symptoms of Seasonal Affective Disorder seem to me to line up with the common experience of living in regions of the world with persistent overcast weather (e.g. London, Seattle/Vancouver, Tokyo.) I'd love to see a study of whether those regions have higher-than-normal levels of nearsightedness in the populations that grew up there (though this effect might be totally invisible next to larger effects like differing choices in indoor/outdoor activities for children.)
Not sure. I'm not an ophthalmologist; I've just read a bunch of journal papers to try to understand the development of nearsightedness specifically, since I wanted to use it as an example of an effect in a pop-psychology blog post.
Probably any ophthalmology textbook would go into the development of the eyeball, though I'm not sure the science of the effect of light on said development is old enough to have made it into any of those textbooks. I think current textbooks would explain that myopia is caused by a distortion of the shape of the eyeball during development, but wouldn't attempt to go any deeper into why that distortion occurs.
From a debating perspective, seeing as the proof you sited (for the eye thing) appears to be incorrect, does that make you reconsider that your argument of what the real problem that should be addressed (that is, chinese and western parents aren't properly raising their kids)- might be wrong too, given that you sited no proof with this?
Hrm, I think this is just mobile gaming catching up. World of Warcraft had this built in as long ago as 2012, all gaming cafes had a timer in their top-right corner of their screens as well.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17900613 A related discussion on this, in case people are interested. The article itself is focused on Tencent's value loss as a result of this announcement.
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[ 0.22 ms ] story [ 50.2 ms ] threadchina is learning well with the west.
Huh, I thought the current prevailing theory was that it was caused by lack of bright daylight, not by too much reading or to many hours in dim light. So a certain number of hours outside a day should have a protective effect.
https://www.nature.com/news/the-myopia-boom-1.17120
Nothing to do with reading or studying (i.e. "eye strain"); it's purely the poor light.
Facts for fun, from what studies I've read on the subject:
Photosensitive retinal ganglion cells produce dopamine when they're struck with daylight-like light levels; this dopamine affects the flexion of the musculature around the eye, which in turn affects the shape of the eye as the eye, those muscles, and the bones of the skull all develop and grow together (the muscle under flexion "reserves" more space for itself, so less is filled with bone, and so, when relaxed, it allows the eyeball to expand.)
The human body has evolved to assume this effect, and so the eyeball develops into a "normal" shape only under the presence of this chronic photo-mediated local dopamine release. Without it, the eye develops into a more ellipsoidal shape, distorting the cornea.
---
One thing I haven't been able to glean from these studies is what light level qualifies as "daylight-like." Do the photosensitive RGCs activate only under full sunlight (~100K lux); with shaded sunlight (~10K lux); on overcast days (~1K lux)?
My own hypothesis is that the limit lies somewhere between "shade" and "overcast", since a lack of photosensitive RGC stimulation leading to a lack of SCN-mediated dopamine release to the brain generally, is a good explanation for Seasonal Affective Disorder; and—more anecdotally—the symptoms of Seasonal Affective Disorder seem to me to line up with the common experience of living in regions of the world with persistent overcast weather (e.g. London, Seattle/Vancouver, Tokyo.) I'd love to see a study of whether those regions have higher-than-normal levels of nearsightedness in the populations that grew up there (though this effect might be totally invisible next to larger effects like differing choices in indoor/outdoor activities for children.)
Probably any ophthalmology textbook would go into the development of the eyeball, though I'm not sure the science of the effect of light on said development is old enough to have made it into any of those textbooks. I think current textbooks would explain that myopia is caused by a distortion of the shape of the eyeball during development, but wouldn't attempt to go any deeper into why that distortion occurs.
Edit: in China