Abstract
PurposeTo investigate the effects of reading with mobile phone versus text on accommodation accuracy and near work-induced transient myopia (NITM) and its subsequent decay during near reading in young adults with mild to moderate myopia.MethodsThe refractions of 31 young adults were measured with an open-field autorefractor (WAM-5500, Grand Seiko) for two reading tasks with a mobile phone and text at 33 cm. The mean age of the young adults was 24.35 ± 1.80 years. The baseline refractive aspects were determined clinically with full distance refractive correction in place. The initial NITM and its decay time and accommodative lag were assessed objectively immediately after binocularly viewing a mobile phone or text for 40 min.ResultsThe mean ± standard deviation (SD) initial NITM magnitude was greater for reading with text (0.23 ± 0.26 D) than for reading with mobile phone (0.12 ± 0.17 D), but there was no significant difference between the two reading tasks (p = 0.082). The decay time (median, first quartile, and third quartile) was 60 s (16, 154) and 70 s (32, 180) in the phone task and text task groups, respectively. There was also no significant difference in the decay time between the two reading types in general (p = 0.294). The accommodative lags of text tasks and mobile phones tasks were equivalent (1.27 ± 0.52 D vs 1.31 ± 0.64 D, p = 0.792).ConclusionThere were no significant differences in accommodative lags and the initial NITM and its decay time between reading with a mobile phone and text in young adults.
Highlights
Myopia has become an important public health issue worldwide, especially in Asian countries, and is a major cause of correctable visual impairment [1, 2]
As reading or writing with paper and a pen is gradually replaced by digital screen time, there is a lack of consistent results of an association between screen time and myopia development
Effect of reading type and refractive error on initial near work-induced transient myopia (NITM) and its decay time There were 31 subjects in total, 27 datasets for NITM were effective (2 subjects were missing the data for posttask distance refraction measurements and 2 subjects had abnormal magnitudes due to measurement errors) in the text task
Summary
Myopia has become an important public health issue worldwide, especially in Asian countries, and is a major cause of correctable visual impairment [1, 2]. Different mechanisms have been found to be proposed, including accommodation error during near work (which means a lag in accommodation when the accommodation response is unable to meet the dioptric demand) and the small transient myopic far point shift immediately after long-term near work [3, 11]. These two mechanisms are thought to be key factors in myopia progression
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