Can children have dry eye

Most children these days spend a large proportion of their day using screens. Whether for school work or down time, technology plays a big role in their day to day life. Not only do children who spend a lot of time on screen have higher rates of shortsightedness but all this screen time is affecting their natural blink rates.

When we consider a person engaged in normal conversation blinks 15-20x per minute, this is reduced 66% when staring at a screen or concentrating. The other downside of screen use it that the blinks kids are performing  are incomplete in nature.

So why is this an issue?  Blinking properly is essential in helping spread the tear film and keeping the glands functioning. It helps to think of the glands as a muscle that needs to be exercised so that it doesn’t get smaller and stop working. Once we lose our fat glands, research shows they don’t return.