Stories · Health
Are People With Glasses Smarter? Myopia Explained
People with nearsighted vision (far-away things look blurry, so they need glasses) really do score a little higher on intelligence tests, on average. But the glasses do not come from a sharp brain. They come from school.
The story
People with nearsighted vision (far-away things look blurry, so they need glasses) really do score a little higher on intelligence tests, on average. But the glasses do not come from a sharp brain. They come from school.
Nearsightedness usually starts in childhood, when the eyeball grows a little too long. In 2018, British scientists used genes to test which one causes the other. People born with genes that keep them in school longer ended up more nearsighted. But genes for blurry eyes did not keep anyone in school longer. Another team found the same thing.
Why would school do that? Reading up close plays a part, but light seems to matter more. Daylight outside is often more than fifty times brighter than a room indoors. When schools in China added one extra 40-minute class outdoors every day, fewer children became nearsighted: about 30 in 100 after three years, against about 40 in 100 at other schools.
Glasses do not make anyone smarter. If you have kids, time outside in daylight is one of the simplest ways to help protect their eyesight.
Sources
Every fact in this story is backed by at least two of these. How we check facts.
- Leder et al., Swiss Journal of Psychology (2011)
- Hellstrom and Tekle, European Journal of Social Psychology (1994)
- Saw et al., Investigative Ophthalmology and Visual Science (2004)
- Rosner and Belkin, Archives of Ophthalmology (1987)
- Mirshahi et al., Investigative Ophthalmology and Visual Science (2016)
- Williams et al., Scientific Reports (2017)
- National Eye Institute
- American Optometric Association
- Mountjoy et al., BMJ (2018)
- Cuellar-Partida et al., Genetic Epidemiology (2016)
- Huang et al., PLOS ONE (2015)
- Clark et al., Investigative Ophthalmology and Visual Science (2023)
- Lanca et al., Translational Vision Science and Technology (2019)
- Bhandary et al., PLOS ONE (2021)
- Zhou et al., Progress in Retinal and Eye Research (2017)
- Norton and Siegwart, Experimental Eye Research (2013)
- He et al., JAMA (2015)
- He et al., Ophthalmology (2022)
Full transcript
The smart kid in glasses is not just a stereotype.
In studies, people rate the same face as smarter when it wears glasses. And there is a real link underneath. Nearsighted people, the ones who see far-away things as blurry, tend to score a little higher on intelligence tests. The difference is small, but studies in three countries found it.
So does a sharp brain come with blurry eyes? Or does something else cause both? Nearsightedness usually starts in school, when the eyeball grows a little too long.
In twenty eighteen, British scientists used genes to find out. People born with genes that nudge them to stay in school longer ended up more nearsighted. The reverse was not true. Genes for blurry eyes did not add years of study. Another team found the same thing. Every extra year of school made eyes a little more blurry.
But why would school do that? Reading up close plays a part, but light seems to matter more. Daylight outside is often more than fifty times brighter than most rooms indoors. The leading idea is that bright light makes the eye release a chemical called dopamine, which slows the eyeball's growth.
Schools in China tested it. Some added one extra class outdoors, forty minutes, every day. After three years, about thirty in every hundred of those children had become nearsighted. At the other schools, it was about forty in a hundred.
Here is our take. Glasses do not make anyone smarter. But if you have kids, get them outside in daylight. It is one of the simplest ways to help protect their eyesight.
The smart kid in glasses is real. Blame the classroom, not the brain.
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