The Pandemic’s Cost: How COVID-19 Shaped Eye Health and Myopia in Children

When the world shut down in early 2020, digital learning quickly replaced classrooms. Laptops, tablets, and smartphones became the gateway to education and connection. Now, several years after the COVID-19 pandemic began, we’re finally in a position to evaluate its long-term impact— not just socially or academically, but physiologically. One area of growing concern is children’s eye health, particularly the sharp rise in myopia in children (nearsightedness).

Myopia: More Than Just Blurry Vision

Myopia in children occurs when the eye grows too long from front to back, making distant objects appear blurry. While correctable with glasses, progressive myopia in kids or high myopia significantly increases the risk of sight-threatening conditions such as retinal detachment, glaucoma, and macular degeneration. Early onset nearsightedness in children is especially worrisome, as it allows more time for the condition to worsen over the years and can lead to serious vision problems in kids.

Surge in Screen Time—and Myopia

Multiple studies have now shown a strong correlation between increased digital device use during the pandemic and rising rates of myopia in children.

In India, children experienced a significant increase in screen time during the COVID-19 lockdown, with more than half of surveyed parents reporting an increase of over two hours per day, and some noting rises of six hours or more. This surge was accompanied by a sharp increase in digital eye strain in children, with symptoms such as headaches, dry eyes, and blurred vision (Agarwal et al., 2021).

In Saudi Arabia, a cross-sectional study found that almost 70% of children exhibited symptoms of digital eye strain in children during the COVID-19 lockdown, with those using digital devices for more than five hours per day at significantly greater risk (Aldukhayel et al., 2022).

In China, a large-scale study found that each additional hour of daily screen time was associated with a 26% higher risk of myopic progression among school-aged children, reinforcing concerns that reduced outdoor time and prolonged near work during lockdowns contributed significantly to worsening vision (Liu et al., 2021).

Outdoor Time: A Protective Factor Lost

Time spent outdoors has long been recognized as a protective factor against myopia. Sunlight exposure stimulates dopamine release in the retina, which helps regulate eye growth and slows the elongation of the eyeball. During COVID-19 lockdowns, outdoor time decreased dramatically — by more than 50% in some regions — contributing to a global rise in childhood myopia (Xu et al., 2021; Yang et al., 2022).

This drastic change in visual behavior—more near work, less outdoor time—created what researchers now call a “myopia-inducing environment”.

Long-Term Impact: A New Normal?

Even after lockdowns ended, many aspects of digital life remained. Hybrid learning, increased use of tablets in classrooms, and recreational screen use continue at elevated levels compared to pre-pandemic norms. For today’s children, technology has become a constant, not just a temporary shift.

Experts now fear that the COVID-19 lockdowns may have permanently altered developmental patterns in children’s vision, with potential long-term consequences. While the global myopia trend was already on the rise before the pandemic, COVID-19 acted as an accelerant — particularly in school-aged children — by dramatically increasing screen time and reducing outdoor exposure during a critical window of visual development (Liu et al., 2021).

Tracking the Global Rise of Myopia

The prevalence of myopia in children and adolescents has been steadily increasing over the past few decades, with a noticeable acceleration during the COVID-19 pandemic. Global estimates suggest that in the 1990s and early 2000s, approximately 24–25% of children were myopic. This number rose to about 30% by 2011–2019. During the pandemic years (2020–2023), we witnessed a COVID-19 myopia spike, with prevalence climbing to an estimated 36%, largely due to screen time and myopia risk factors like excessive digital device use and decreased outdoor time for children (Boseley, 2024; Morgan & French, 2024). Looking ahead, projections indicate that by 2050, over 40% of children and adolescents could be affected by vision problems in kids — totaling more than 740 million myopic cases globally (Morgan & French, 2024).

Graph 1: Global prevalence of myopia in children from 1990 to 2050.