Young people (and not so young) are spending more and more time playing video games and living in the metaverse, a trend accelerated by the pandemic. How does that affect vision? Does it have negative effects or, on the contrary, can it help to develop skills? Specifically, we investigate how online life affects visual acuity in the hands of visually challenging hobbies.
In recent years we have experienced the explosion of e-sports and the figure of gamers who are professionally dedicated to these sports video games has emerged. Their popularity and the business they drive is starting to rival professional athletes, but there are some things they can't compete with. Elite athletes exhibit, on average, higher dynamic visual acuity than their gamer counterparts. That is the conclusion reached by a study conducted by researchers at the Canadian University of Waterloo.
Let's go back a screen: visual acuity is understood as the ability to see clearly at a certain distance. An everyday example (reserved for the non-myopic) would be being able to clearly distinguish the features of the person who greets us from the other side of the sidewalk. In more scientific tests, such as those at the eye doctor's office, the ability to identify small objects is measured; specifically, black symbols on a white background. Visual acuity is quantified on the 6/6 scale, which indicates that the individual in question is able to identify the same symbols at a distance of 6 meters as a person with perfect eyesight. Evidently there are people who have less visual acuity – as all myopic people well know – and, in the same way, individuals who have greater acuity. It is estimated that the maximum visual acuity that a human being can achieve is 6/3. That is, it can identify the same symbols at a distance of 6 meters as a person with normal vision at 3 meters. Very far from the visual acuity estimated for some birds of prey such as hawks, which would reach a value of 20/2.
Within the framework of the aforementioned research, dynamic visual acuity is defined as the ability to accurately detect small moving objects. Something that in both real and virtual professional sports can make the difference between opponents. Especially in ball disciplines in which it travels at great speed such as soccer, basketball, and even more so baseball or tennis.

No evidences

There is no evidence that e-sports players have greater visual acuity than other people. Moreover, some studies postulate that this activity does not serve as training to improve visual skills. On the contrary, what does seem to be proven is that gamers have a shorter tear break-up time. This means that the moist film that protects the eye between blinks evaporates or breaks faster, so the eye is more exposed to external agents, which translates into stinging and dry eyes. And they also exhibit a higher accommodative delay; that is, the time needed for the eye to readjust to focus at a greater distance. Actually, both are familiar consequences for anyone who has to spend long hours in front of a computer screen.