Spending sufficient time outdoors during childhood significantly lowers the risk of developing myopia, also known as nearsightedness, because bright sunlight stimulates dopamine release in the retina.

A closer look

Spending sufficient time outdoors during childhood significantly lowers the risk of developing myopia, also known as nearsightedness, because bright sunlight stimulates dopamine release in the retina. This retinal dopamine actually stops the eyeball from growing too long, which is the primary mechanical cause of not being able to see distant objects clearly. So while we blame our terrible vision on staring at screens, reading in the dark, or bad genetics, the real culprit is that we just refused to go play outside like our parents begged us to. Modern society has effectively built a generation of elongated, defective eyeballs simply by keeping children trapped inside perfectly temperature-controlled classrooms for most of their waking hours. It is peak human irony that our desperate quest to remain comfortably indoors has literally ruined our ability to look at the horizon