I’m thinking it’s the heavy metal that the rapscallions these days are hipping and hopping to.

The reality is near-sightedness is a massive problem in countries with insane childhood studying hours, eg all across east Asia.

I bet not long before that the old folks were complaining about the kids watching too much TV, reading too many comics, or playing too much backgammon.

That doesn't certainly help, but there was already a disproportionate army of myopic asian (mostly chinese IIRC) kids that were spending their entire young lives burried in books, way before modern world glued their eyesight to those tiny crappy screens.

Now wonder if Chinese children must spend more time buried in books because their writing system is more time-demanding to learn (~4000 logograms vs. a few dozens letters in languages with alphabetic writing systems).

> I very much doubt kids 'studying too much' is the problem - staring at iphones all day watching tiktok and playing video games is more like it.

Civilizational myopia is not a new phenomenon. It is much older than iphones or video games.

Staring at a book or a chess set has the exact same effect.