Surgeon General Screen Advisory and Childhood Myopia

August 3, 2026

The New Surgeon General Advisory on Screen Use: What Orange County Parents Should Know About Myopia

On May 20, 2026, the U.S. Surgeon General’s office released a national advisory titled Warning on the Harms of Screen Use: An Advisory and Toolkit on How to Protect Children and Youth. Most of the headlines that followed focused on sleep, mental health, and academic performance, but tucked inside the advisory is something that matters a great deal to us as eye doctors. The advisory names myopia, or nearsightedness, as one of the physical health risks associated with heavy screen use in childhood.
For families across Costa Mesa, Irvine, Newport Beach, Tustin, and Huntington Beach, this is worth pausing on. Not because screens are the villain, and not because a device is going to ruin your child’s eyes overnight. But because myopia is one of the few childhood vision conditions where timing changes the outcome, and the earlier a family understands that, the more options they have.
This article explains what the advisory actually says about vision, why myopia is about more than a blurry whiteboard, which habits are worth building at home, and when a child needs clinical myopia management rather than a stronger pair of glasses.

What Does the Advisory Actually Say About Vision?

The advisory’s language is measured, and we think that’s the right tone. It states that increased time spent on screen-based activities has been associated with a higher risk of myopia, particularly in children with limited outdoor time.
That last phrase carries most of the weight. The research consistently points to two lifestyle factors moving together: more sustained near work, and less time outdoors. Screens happen to combine both. A device held close to the face is near work, and time on a device is almost always time indoors.
The advisory also cites a projection that has become a landmark number in eye care: by 2050, nearly 40% of children worldwide could be myopic. It also gives a sense of the scale of the exposure. Toddlers now average roughly two hours of daily media use, while pre-teens and teens routinely reach four hours or more. We’ve written separately on the underlying question of whether screen time causes myopia in children, and on what causes myopia in the first place.
Genetics still matter. A child with one or two nearsighted parents carries a meaningfully higher risk. But genetics alone don’t explain how quickly myopia rates have climbed in a single generation.

Why Myopia Is More Than a Blurry Whiteboard

Here’s the part that surprises most parents in our exam room. A standard pair of glasses will make your child see clearly. What it will not do is change what’s driving the problem underneath. Myopia develops because the eye is growing too long from front to back, a measurement called axial length. Correcting the blur does nothing to slow that elongation.
That distinction matters because axial length doesn’t reset in adulthood. An eye that grows too long stays too long, and the degree of myopia a child finishes growing with carries a lifetime risk profile. Higher levels of myopia are associated with increased lifetime risk of retinal detachment, glaucoma, cataracts, and myopic macular degeneration.
So when we talk about myopia management, we’re not talking about sharper vision this year. We’re talking about how much your child’s eye grows between now and their late teens, and what that means for their eye health at 50.

Five Habits Worth Building at Home

The Surgeon General’s advisory offers families a simple framework built around five words. We think it’s genuinely useful, and none of it requires throwing out the iPad.

Discuss: Set expectations for everyone in the household, not just the kids. Talk about what they’re viewing, who they’re interacting with, and how it makes them feel.
Do: Model the screen habits you’d like to see. Children calibrate to what adults actually do, not what they’re told.
Delay: Hold off on tablets, smartphones, and social media as long as is practical. Later is genuinely better here.
Divert: Make sure screens aren’t the automatic answer to boredom. Outdoor alternatives do double duty for eye health.
Disconnect: Build predictable screen-free windows into the day. Meals and the hour before bed are the easiest places to start.

If you add one thing from this list, make it outdoor time. It is the single lifestyle factor most consistently linked to lower myopia risk, and Orange County weather removes most of the excuses: park mornings, beach afternoons, and after-school practices are realistic year-round here. We’ve covered the evidence on outdoor time and myopia prevention in more depth, and knowing the early signs of myopia in children is the other half of the equation.

Healthy Habits Help. They Don’t Replace Treatment.

We want to be straightforward about this, because it’s where a lot of well-intentioned families lose a year or two. Better habits reduce risk. They do not reverse myopia that has already started, and they are not a substitute for treatment once a child’s prescription is climbing. At that point, there are FDA-authorized treatment options, and choosing among them is a clinical decision, not a retail one.
At Insight Vision Optometry, our myopia management program includes:

Orthokeratology (ortho-k): Custom lenses worn overnight that reshape the cornea while your child sleeps, providing clear vision through the day with no daytime lenses. This is often the first option we discuss with swimmers, wrestlers, and contact sport athletes. Parents usually want to know whether ortho-k is safe for kids, and that’s a fair question to lead with.
MiSight 1 day soft contact lenses: FDA-approved daily disposables designed specifically to slow myopia progression in children.
Stellest myopia control spectacle lenses: For families who prefer glasses, or for children not yet ready for contact lenses.
NaturalVue multifocal and SpecialEyes custom multifocal lenses, for children whose prescriptions fall outside standard parameters.
Low-dose atropine eye drops, used alone or in combination with an optical treatment.
Dual modality therapy, combining approaches for children whose eyes keep progressing quickly on a single treatment.
Axial length measurement and progression monitoring, so we’re tracking eye growth directly rather than inferring it from the prescription alone.

Which approach fits depends on your child’s age, current prescription, how fast their eyes are changing, their maturity level, and what your family will realistically stick with. That’s a conversation, not a formula, and it usually starts with comparing the myopia control options side by side.

We Measure Eye Growth, Not Just Prescriptions

A prescription check tells you what has already happened. It’s a lagging signal, and it’s the reason some families don’t realize how fast things are moving until two or three years have passed.
Our Costa Mesa office uses a Zeiss AXL WAVE optical biometer to measure axial length directly, so we can see how much a child’s eye has actually grown between visits, often before anyone notices a change in vision. Tracked over time, that number tells us whether a treatment is holding and whether it needs adjusting. Costa Mesa also houses our Pentacam corneal tomographer and Tomey WaveDyn aberrometer, which guide lens design for children in orthokeratology and custom lens fits.
This is the difference between myopia management and simply updating a prescription each year.

The Team Behind Our Myopia Program

Myopia management is one of the areas our practice has invested in most deliberately, and it is available at both our Costa Mesa and Irvine offices.
Dr. Thanh Mai, OD, FSLS, leads our myopia management program across both locations. He holds a Fellowship in the International Academy of Orthokeratology and Myopia Control, serves as Vice President of Clinical Innovation at Treehouse Eyes, and sits on the EssilorLuxottica advisory board for Stellest. He is a Vision Source Key Opinion Leader, a contributing writer for Review of Myopia Management, a past President of the Orange County Optometric Society, and a clinical instructor at Marshall B. Ketchum University’s Southern California College of Optometry. He was a nearsighted kid himself, and it shows in how he talks to families.
Dr. Nathan Schramm, OD, FSLS, FBCLA (Costa Mesa) served as principal investigator for the Euclid Phoenix orthokeratology randomized clinical trial and has presented multiple posters on orthokeratology and myopia progression. He is a Fellow of the Scleral Lens Education Society and the British Contact Lens Association, and he focuses on teenage progressors, difficult corneas, and optimizing ortho-k fits that haven’t worked elsewhere.
Dr. Hawkin Lui, OD (Irvine) leads myopia care at our Irvine office, with a focus on pediatric and teen myopia control contact lenses, long-term progression monitoring, and family education. His own nearsightedness was caught at age 12 after a teacher noticed him struggling in class and in sports, which shapes how he counsels parents about early detection. He also makes a point that bears repeating: a school vision screening is not a substitute for a comprehensive eye exam.
Dr. Valerie Lam, OD, FAAO, FOVDR (Costa Mesa) is board certified in Pediatric Developmental Vision Care and residency-trained in Pediatrics and Binocular Vision. She manages myopia in children who also have binocular vision or accommodative demands, and in children with special needs.
Dr. Nhi Nguyen, OD works within Treehouse Eyes protocols and lectures on childhood myopia education through her “Behind the Blur” talks.
The Treehouse Eyes program is offered at our Costa Mesa location.

When Should You Book an Evaluation?

Schedule a myopia evaluation for your child if any of these apply:

Their prescription has increased from one year to the next
They squint, or struggle to see the board at school
They sit unusually close to the TV or hold devices close to their face
They were diagnosed with myopia at a young age
One or both parents are nearsighted
Their myopia is worsening, but their axial length has never been measured

That last one comes up more often than it should. If a prescription is changing and no one has measured eye growth, an important part of the picture is missing. A comprehensive eye exam is a reasonable place to start.

Patient Takeaways

The 2026 Surgeon General advisory names myopia as a physical health risk associated with heavy screen use, particularly in children with limited outdoor time.
Glasses correct the blur but do not slow axial elongation, the eye growth that drives myopia and carries a lifetime risk profile.
Higher levels of myopia are associated with increased lifetime risk of retinal detachment, glaucoma, cataracts, and myopic macular degeneration.
Outdoor time is the single lifestyle factor most consistently linked to lower myopia risk, and it is realistic year-round in Orange County.
Healthy habits reduce risk but do not reverse myopia already underway. Proven clinical options include ortho-k, MiSight 1 day, Stellest lenses, and low-dose atropine.
If a child’s prescription is changing and axial length has never been measured, an important part of the picture is missing.

Schedule a Myopia Evaluation in Orange County

Insight Vision Optometry sees pediatric patients at both Orange County offices. Our Costa Mesa location is built for children, with a dedicated children’s exam room, a full pediatric optical, and a prize desk that has convinced more than a few reluctant kids that the eye doctor is fine, actually.
Screens are part of childhood now. The question isn’t whether your child uses them. It’s whether anyone is measuring what’s happening to their eyes while they do.