Do Children Need Sunglasses?
Children need sunglasses.
I’ll start this with a very loud YES! ABSOLUTELY! ARE YOU MAD? OF COURSE! And once I’ve brought myself down from my soapbox, i’ll tell you why the idea that children don’t need to wear sunglasses because “they’re only young”, is one of the things that gives me actual nightmares!
Seb wearing his sunglasses from Waterloo Eye Centre
Sunglasses wouldn’t exist if there wasn’t a need for them. They make everything more comfortable to look at when the sun’s glaring in your face. Think about this, your brain makes you screw up your eyes and your pupils shrink when you’re looking towards bright sunlight. That’s for your own good. It’s your body’s way of cutting out as much of that uncomfortable light as it can. Putting on sunglasses shades us from the sun and means we don’t have to walk round with screwed up eyes. They’ll save you a fortune on botox! If you know you have a need for sunglasses yourself, then of course the answer is yes, your kids need them too. The sun is bright. It hurts our eyes. We all deserve a little comfort from that.
I’ll bring us now, to the single most significant reason your children should wear sunglasses (in my opinion).
What harm can it do?
UV exposure to the eyes can cause irreversible, sight threatening conditions now, and later on in life.
Did you hear that at the back?
Children and teens are vulnerable to UV rays because their eyes are not as developed as adults’ eyes. In fact, the ocular lens in youngsters cannot properly handle sunlight, so the sun can easily damage their retinas. The lens of a child’s eye lets 70% more UV reach the retina than an adult eye. On top of more UV getting through, they generally spend more time outside than adults. It’s likely that over 60% of their life exposure to the sun will occur before aged 20. Most of which time, we are responsible for them, their wellbeing, and their little, developing eyes!
“My child wears a hat instead”, has to be the most used reason for parent’s not putting sunglasses on their little ones. Hats are great! They stop their head’s from burning and hair from drying out. I suppose they do offer SOME protection to their eyes too. But hat’s only protect from UV from above. UV reflected from below is just as harmful. Water reflects up to 100% of UV, snow 85% and sand up to 25%. You can see the point I’m making here. Also, kid’s look up more.
Lastly, and some may say most importantly, sunglasses are cool. If you google “who is the coolest person in the world”, it’s Morgan Freeman. Here’s a picture of Morgan Freeman in sunglasses. And he looks cool.
