It's time to put down your phone.
Researchers from a university in California have found that eye damage caused by too much screen time can harm other important organs (器官) and even shorten your life. Professor Pankaj Kapahi and Brian Hodge published their findings. It showed that the real situation is worse than we thought.
"Our study shows that this is a big problem: eye damage may actually lead to problems in other organs," Kapahi said. He and Hodge studied the patterns of fruit flies and found that overexposure (过度接触) to light in the eyes can cause or worsen chronic disease (慢性病). Further research found that fruit flies that were completely in darkness lived longer than those that were not.
Too much time spent in front of a screen can harm your health."To our surprise, we found that the eye itself, at least in the fruit fly, can directly change life," Hodge said. "Looking at computer and phone screens will surely do harm to us. On top of these, being exposed to light pollution late into the night is especially bad for us," Kapahi explained. "It messes up eye protection, damaging the rest of the body and the brain."
These findings are very worrying because screen time has increased fast for many kids because of COVID- 19. Parents reported that although they prevented their kids from playing video games, children's screen time still increased from 0.75 hours to 6.5 hours a day due to online classes.
"We always think of the eye as something that serves us. We don't think of it as something that needs to be protected," Kapahi reminded us.
