This probably wasn’t the loudest announcement from Apple’s keynote on Monday, June 5, when the Vision Pro mixed-reality headset was unveiled there. But it might well come to the aid of many a kid.
Amongst all the announcements at the opening of WWDC, Apple’s annual developer conference, two health-related features were unveiled around eye health, in particular to slow down or even reduce the risk of developing nearsightedness in children.
On the side of the Californian company, it is explained that 30% of the world population is affected to varying degrees. And this figure could reach 50% of humanity in 2050. The proliferation of screens and the time spent consulting them obviously does not help and, at this point, Apple also has a role to play.
To do this, the apple brand wants to act on what it can manage, its own products. Whether it’s iOS 17 for your iPhones, iPadOS 17 for your tablets, or watchOS 10 for your Apple Watch, you’ve decided to apply the recommendations of healthcare professionals to the best of your ability to protect children ages 5 to 15 from the risks of a decrease in vision. acuity.
Keep children away from screens
Among the causes of blurred vision is a lack of exposure to outside light. The International Myopia Institute estimates that a child should spend between 80 and 120 minutes a day in daylight. With indoor incentives, video consoles and screens of all kinds, they go out to play much less. Apple will rely on the ambient light sensor in your connected watch to measure time spent outdoors and pass this information to the Health app on iPhone or now iPad with the app’s arrival in iPadOS 17.
Obviously, many children do not have an iPhone to be able to use the Apple Watch. Since iOS 15, it is possible to create an account for them and pair the watch with a parent’s iCloud account while indicating that a child will use it through the Family settings. However, the watch must have an eSIM card linked to the family account.
The iPad and iPhone will also keep kids from getting too close to a screen. Building on the TrueDepth camera that identifies faces on iPhone and iPad Pro with Face ID, the Screen Distance feature (to be enabled in settings) will prompt the child to stand at least 30cm from the slab.
This new option will also be able to give advice on how to develop good viewing habits for children. Adults do not forget and it is eye strain that will also be controlled with reminder messages.
Fight anxiety and depression
Determined to better protect the eyes of children whose visual health is also deteriorating from their screens, Apple adds a bit more precise consideration by relying on its own technologies. Vision monitoring thus adds to that of sleep, menstrual cycles, heart rate, arrhythmias, noise exposure or even fall detection among the health data that the Apple Watch or the iPhone, thanks to its multiple sensors, can analyze. And Apple is adding a new entry to its palette: mental health tracking.
To free the minds of its users and strengthen their well-being, Apple will offer to assess their state of emotional awareness and resilience. And to identify your emotions, but also to better manage your most unpleasant feelings and “be positive”, the “Mindfulness” application improves by offering a stimulating and intuitive way to judge your state of mind. The user must then define a shape that represents their current state of mind (from very unpleasant to very pleasant), an impact factor (work, family, travel, sleep, activity, etc.) and the feeling that best describes it.
Thus, the Health app will take anxiety or depression more into account, it will evaluate them to help the user determine their level of risk, seek help in their geographical area and will even be able to generate a PDF document to share with a health professional. . A way to support awareness of one’s own mental health that can already help to do part of the job.
Source: BFM TV
