Ocular and systemic symptoms in digital devices users: A comparative study between pre and post COVID era

Abstract

Use of digital devices like mobiles, tablets, laptops had increased with the advancement of time and technology as well as during COVID-19 pandemic. These digital devices have tendency to cause number of visual, ocular and systemic symptoms. The purpose of this study was to find the association between various ocular, visual and systemic symptoms with the duration of using digital devices. : An online Google questionnaire consisting of demographic information and pre tested questionnaires of symptoms related was distributed using social platforms. The responses were analysed using different statistical tests that included one way ANOVA, pearson Correlation and paired t-test. Statistical significance was considered if P < 0.05. : During lockdown, most of the participants were using the digital devices for more than 6 hours daily (68%). 88 (40%) of the respondents were using two digital devices and 24 respondents (10.9%) were using more than two digital devices during lockdown. Ocular symptoms including watering of eyes (P = 0.002), dry eyes (P = 0.006) and painful eyes (P = 0.011) showed positive correlation with hours of using digital devices during lockdown. Similarly, neck pain (P = 0.000) and shoulder pain (P = 0.009) were the major systemic symptoms associated with increasing hour of digital devices use.Increasing exposure to the multiple digital devices have negative impact on ocular and systemic symptoms.