Does wearing glasses weaken your eyesight?

You’ve probably heard the saying that wearing spectacles weakens your eyesight over time.

If you feel like your eyesight has become worse since you started wearing glasses, you are not alone. Many people find themselves reaching for their glasses more and more frequently – but is it really anything more than natural causes?

Presbyopia, the natural loss of your eye’s focusing ability, is a common eye condition that comes with aging.

What your spectacles have done is make you so used to seeing things clearly that when you take them off, the blur is more obvious, making it seem like your vision may have gotten worse.

Don’t blame the glasses, though! You’re actually experiencing the contrast between corrected and uncorrected vision.

Early correction important for children

However, the situation is not the same with children. Myopia, or short-sightedness, is common in children, and not wearing spectacles may actually make their eyesight worse.

Several studies on children with myopia have been conducted over the years, and it was found that myopia progressed faster in children who did not wear the correct glasses.

Children’s eyes need to learn how to see clearly at an early age, or they will develop amblyopia, or a “lazy eye”, where the incomplete visual development within the brain causes poor vision.

To avoid permanent visual problems, early diagnosis and prescription of correct spectacles are severely important. They prevent children from straining their eyes unnecessarily and have been proven to help slow down the development of myopia.

Truth is, many eye conditions get worse over time by themselves, with or without glasses. If you want to see clearly through your whole life, wearing spectacles is pretty much unavoidable. The least you can do is get a cute pair.