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Asked by lisaloo to Claire, Kate, Matt, Rob, Sam on 24 Jun 2013.
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Sam Geen answered on 24 Jun 2013:
Sometimes it’s genetic – my whole family uses glasses. But sometimes it’s due to straining your eyes reading a lot or using a computer a lot – when I was doing my PhD, most people in the department used to have glasses because they read a lot as kids and use computers all the time (although few people in my current job use glasses, which is weird).
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Claire Lee answered on 24 Jun 2013:
Your eyes focus by tensing and relaxing their muscles and ligaments, and as you get older these muscles and ligaments weaken, like the rest of your body. So you can’t focus as well as you used to be able to, and you need some help like with glasses.
I have a sort of opposite problem – my eyesight is 20/20 but I wear glasses for reading to help my eyes relax a bit more, because they end up focusing hard but not relaxing enough, which made them sore 🙂
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Matthew Pankhurst answered on 25 Jun 2013:
Your eyesight can go bad for a number of reasons. One is that the eye gets harder over time and changes shape. The shape is the most important way eyes focus light, which means we don’t see blurry. If your eye is stiffer, it can’t focus as well, giving us bad eyesight. Another is if something gets in the way of the light, like stuff growing around and inside the eye which light can’t pass through. Another is damage to the sensitive parts at the make of the eye, you can burn this part by looking directly at the sun (don’t whatever you do look at the sun!)
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