The amount of time children in England spend on screens at school could be harming their "physical and developmental health", a group of more than 150 clinicians has warned.
GPs, paediatricians and other specialists said in an open letter to Education Secretary Lucy Powell and Health Secretary Yvette Cooper that tablets and laptops are being used without a full understanding of their long-term health impacts, including on eye health.
The clinicians said they are prescribing glasses, hearing aids and speech therapy to children "for a problem that is unintentionally being made worse in our schools".
The group of clinicians said nearly one million children are using screens in most lessons, despite studies suggesting a rise in short-sightedness.
They pointed to an analysis of 276 studies covering 5.4 million participants around the world.
That analysis, they claimed, found a rise in short-sightedness among children and adolescents from around 24% in 1990 to almost 36% by 2023, warning the condition is associated with an increased risk of a range of eye health problems.
One of its signatories was Dr Becky Foljambe, an NHS GP and founder of Health Professionals for Safer Screens. She told BBC Radio 4's Today programme parents had not been given the chance to "opt out" of the "excessive" use of screens in schools, which risks children "just not thriving" in education.
She said an "explosion" in short-sightedness "cannot be put down to genetics alone".
Source: BBC News, 13 October 2026
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