Is there any proof/research that it is because of smartphones (screens?)? My anecdote; I have had myopia since I was 7 (I am 45 now), 1 year before my first computer. Since then I have spent most my waking life behind screens and my myopia has been getting less slowly since my first glasses. I now can see quite well without glasses which I could not do 15+ years ago. Also, I should be up for reading glasses soon, but I can read the tiniest fonts on the tiniest screens without reading glasses (I need my normal glasses for that though), which gives me a lot of real estate on small devices (for instance working on a 4k remote desktop on my iPad pro 10inch; of course it does not show the entire desktop at once (you scroll which makes it really a nice kind of 'virtual desktop' system for me) but for me it's comfortable to read while other people cannot even see what i'm doing as the fonts are really minuscule). My eyes don't get tired though and never have on screens, even when screens where crappy flickering low res CRT things (huge fonts of course, compared to what I use now).
Maybe the spending time outside is more related to it as this article says; I work almost exclusively outside. I abhor cold so I only spend my days in warm climes where I work outside behind my computer/phone/tablet/... for the entire day. When I have meetings, I try to get people to meet outside, which usually works (most people like this far more than staying inside, even if it's chilly, but not with freeze/rain/snow of course).
Pre smartphone days(1997) but when I was in college I had to get glasses to see the whiteboard at the end of the first year spent looking at monitors and a drafting board for large periods of the day.
I spent my summers lifeguarding on a beach so three months off staring hard into the distance from 10am to 7pm 6 days a week with hardly any screen time.
When returning to college in September I could see the board without glasses for the first 2-3 months but then would revert to needing glasses.
This cycle repeated itself for several years but the time reverting to glasses got shorter each year.
Sample size of 1, YMMV
Fascinating story, and I love the implication that you were lifeguarding without glasses. I know from personal experience that bright sunlight improves visual acuity (bright images, pupil constriction, and squinting all help), so obviously you were able to do your job, but the mental image is pretty funny!
I actually never though of that and had a good laugh reading your comment.
I had to pass a medical with an eye test for the job so I presume I was safe.
Eyesight is a complicated thing, I have one eye much worse than the other, can read the monitor fine with my right eye and not at all with my left eye.
I can use a monitor OK for an hour or two with no glasses but after that I get a headache.
My right eye defiantly compensates for my left.
> I now can see quite well without glasses which I could not do 15+ years ago.
This happened to me at 40. The eye doctor explained that human eyes get thicker and more leathery as we age, which changes their shape. So if you're myopic before this time, you have a decent chance of having improved vision. It eventually goes the other way, though, and reading glasses or bifocals are needed to correct your vision.
Maybe the spending time outside is more related to it as this article says; I work almost exclusively outside. I abhor cold so I only spend my days in warm climes where I work outside behind my computer/phone/tablet/... for the entire day. When I have meetings, I try to get people to meet outside, which usually works (most people like this far more than staying inside, even if it's chilly, but not with freeze/rain/snow of course).