Abstract
Purpose :
To investigate the association between social media usage and academic performance in optometry students. In addition, the relationship between screen time and dry eye symptoms was determined in this study.
Methods :
A nineteen-question anonymous survey was completed by 453 young adults, aged 21 to 30 years, who were attending either the Illinois College of Optometry or School of Optometry at Nova Southeastern University. The following data were collected from the subjects: age, gender, GPA, hours of wearing contact lens, Ocular Surface Disease Index (OSDI) questionnaire, screen time including screen time for study and screen time for social media. Spearman correlation was performed to determine the association between dry eye symptoms and screen time.
Results :
The mean screen time was 9.84 (± 3.73) hours with 2.97 (± 2.34) hours for social media and 6.93 (± 3.48) hours for studying. The mean OSDI score was 10.65 (± 8.49). OSDI scores were statistically significantly correlated with social media usage (rs=0.13, P=0.014) and study screen time (rs= 0.12, P=0.006) but not with the hours of wear contact lens (rs=0.02, P=0.69).
Conclusions :
This study found that dry eye symptoms were associated with the duration of screen time in young adults. Longer screen time for both study and social media is associated with worse dry eye symptoms.
This is a 2020 ARVO Annual Meeting abstract.