Due to the increased use of electronic media by children, a recent study explored the characteristics of accommodative behavior in emmetropic and myopic children to a variety of targets displayed on electronic devices. While it found no evidence that electronic displays produce large accommodative lags, the study did find that—as previously shown with adult subjects—closer viewing distance, reduced environmental lighting, monocular viewing and the increase in angular size associated with near viewing all increase the accommodative lag, and thus the amount of hyperopic defocus that these children experienced.

Researchers examined a total of 19 emmetropic and myopic children between seven and 16 years old with best corrected Snellen acuity of 20/20 or better and without any binocular vision anomaly or ocular pathology. The study found that all children accommodated normally, with typical or smaller than usual accommodative lags (mean emmetropic lag= 0.53D, mean myopic lag = 0.32D), but, as shown previously, most subjects experienced lags at near.

Sah RP, Ramasubramanian V, Singh NK, et al. Accommodative behavior and hyperopic defocus in children viewing electronic. Academy 2018 San Antonio.