Photo/Illutration Children use smartphones to connect to the internet. (Asahi Shimbun file photo)

Researchers believe that the closing of schools due to the novel coronavirus epidemic may have had an adverse effect on children: poorer vision due to more time for staring at smartphones or computer screens.

The study, by a group of researchers led by Shingo Noi, a professor of educational physiology at Nippon Sport Science University, found that more children had different vision levels in each eye after the health scare.

In addition, children with weak eyesight had even poorer vision in a later test.

“Looking at small screens, such as smartphones, places a greater burden on one eye," Noi said. "The effect is even greater for children whose vision has not yet stabilized.”

Noi heads the National Network of Physical and Mental Health in Japanese Children, a nongovernmental organization.

In 2020, the NGO conducted a separate study that found elementary and junior high school students spending more time on their smartphones and computers at home between the end of the 2019 school year and the start of the 2020 school year, when schools around Japan closed their doors due to the pandemic.

In the latest study, the research group obtained the cooperation of 11 elementary and junior high schools in Tokyo and the three prefectures of Saitama, Kanagawa and Shizuoka. Health check results for 2019 and 2020 were obtained for 5,893 children.

One finding was that the ratio of children with different eyesight readings in their two eyes increased among boys from 15 percent in 2019 to 21 percent the following year. Similarly, the ratio among girls rose from 18 percent to 23 percent.

The increase was especially large among boys in the first grade as the ratio rose from 6 percent to 15 percent.

An analysis was also conducted on 2,284 children for whom eyesight data was available for two years. Those with weaker vision in the first year were more likely to have poorer eyesight the following year in comparison to those who had no vision problems to begin with.

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