Employees debating whether to invest in voluntary vision benefits might want to stop debating and jump on the bandwagon — especially if they have teens who wear contacts.
A new Today report points out that teens have a bad record when it comes to eye infections from not taking proper care of their contact lenses. In fact, according to a study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, teenagers and young adults indulge in behaviors such as poor hygiene, failure to replace lenses on schedule, and failure to replace lens cases—as well as other risky behavior such as swimming or showering with contacts in. And all of those can lead to serious eye infections, some of which can even lead to blindness.
The CDC study of more than 6,000 people aged 12 and older found that more than 80 percent of all people have at least one habit known to raise the risk of eye infections, the report says. But teens are actually not quite as bad as adults in their 20s, the CDC team finds, possibly because teens are still living at home where adults can supervise them.
According to the study, “Young adults have been reported to have poor planning and a more impulsive lifestyle in relation to contact lens hygiene, possibly related to crowded living conditions (e.g., dormitories, living with roommates and sharing bathrooms), alcohol consumption and attitudes conducive to taking greater risks.”
This most recent study follows up a 2015 effort that found millions of contact lens wearers had poor contact lens hygiene at least some of the time, resulting in nearly a third having to go to the eye doctor as a result.
Among the bad behaviors noted in the study are sleeping with contacts in, especially if the lenses aren’t approved for overnight wear (30 percent of adolescents admit to this) and failing to see an eye doctor at least once a year (44 percent confess to this one). More than 40 percent don’t replace lens storage cases as often as recommended, while more than half admit to not replacing lenses as often as recommended.
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