Children’s bedroom illumination while reading at night

Objective: This study aims to describe children’s patterns of reading at night. Methods: A questionnaire was developed as a google survey with 10 brief questions sent by email to a sample of 35,000 adult subjects who had attended two ophthalmic medical centers in Argentina. Questions included information on age, gender, whether the child had myopia or not, if the child read before going to bed, if there were one or two lights on while reading, and the type of house the child lived in (simple house, house with garden and high rise building). Results: The sample consisted of 588 school aged children (mean age =10.9 ± 2.6 years; 51.7 % males). The prevalence of “self-reported myopia”, “no spectacle use (emmetropes)” and “spectacle use other than myopia” was 21.0%, 62.9% and 16.1% respectively. A large percentage of the children read at night in bed before sleeping (81.6%). In 31.7% of cases children read with lights off with only the light of the device, in 26.4% read with one light on, and in 18.0% of the cases read with two lights on (23.8% answered that their children did not go to bed reading). Older age was the only variable associated with an increased odds of self-reported myopia (Odds Ratio: 1.16; 95% CIs 1.04, 1.29; p=0.006). Conclusion: We found that most children go to bed reading at night in mesopic conditions under low illumination. This could be a risk factor for myopia development. Thus, further studies are necessary to explore this hypothesis.