Is it really true that the majority of adult Americans wear corrective lenses (glasses or contacts)?

Question

I heard somewhere that 70% of American adults now wear corrective lenses. Of those, it is about 50/50 between glasses and contacts, though younger people are more likely to wear contacts and older people are more likely to wear glasses.

Answer 1

Although there is no real way to measure this acurately, I have read that over 2/3 of the world's population needs some sort of corrective eyewear. Weather someone wears the glasses and contacts is another story.  It has been like this for a very long time. 20/20 vision is not the norm and most likely has never been the norm.  The first record of corrective lenses is actually in ancient Egyptian Hyroglyphics. It is not a new problem at all and is mostly inherited so it is commonly a hereditary thing. People who decend from violent cultures often have high incidences of myopia becuase of this. The Japanese and the American Indian both decend from times of extreme violnece in their cultures. If you think about it, the warriors would have had the excellent vision required to see things clearly coming formthe distance and would have left those without the good vision back at the teepee to watch the kids, make baskets, cook dinner, do things that did not require the distance to be good. Those are the ones that were also killed off first becuase they were on the front lines of attack, leaving those that are left in the gene pool with the visual difficulties. This takes many many generations and several hundreds of years to work out. They also have a high incidence of marrying within their own cultures, so it stays with them.  Eyeglass wearers are not always contact lense wearers, but Most contact lense wearers are eyeglass wearers, or they should be becuase most people need both in case they can not wear their contacts all of the time. So, the 50/50 thing is a bit skewed. But it is pretty close. Another interresting thing is that most people do not get their kids eyes checked until there is a problem becuase they think that the "screening" that they get at the pediatrician or at the School's health office is an "eye exam"!  Acording tot he American Optometric Association if you take 400 kids you will find that about 100 of them have some sort of visual issue that really should be addressed. Only 25 of those kids is caught in a screening! So, it is important to have children's eyes examined starting when they are about 6 months old! There is even a free program called Infant See that does the first eye exam free if the baby is between 6 months and a year old. Anyone can go and there is a list of participating doctors at infantsee.org   We do know that age also plays a role in refractive errors and that by about age 40 almost everyone needs glasses to read up close. I have never met anyone who did not need some sort of help to see up close unless they were slightly near sighted and do not wear anything for their distance to therefore see well up close. These people are few and far between, and it is no gaurantee of absence of refractive error, just and absence of glasses. See? You can read more about all this stuff at these links! I am glad you brought it up, it is always interresting to discuss.

Answer 2

I searched and searched about 2 weeks ago when someone asked the same question here.

The latest statistics I could find was a government study done in 1989 that said 61 % of Americans wore corrective lenses of some type...but that has probably increased since then, so close to 70% sounds realistic.

Answer 3

According to the National Eye Institute, approximately 60% of Americans age have refractive errors or defects that could be corrected to give them sharper vision (in other words, 60% of Americans should wear glasses or contacts to correct their vision).  11% of those who need glasses do not have them, so it's more around 55% of Americans who wear corrective lenses, though more should.

Answer 4

As a Optician, I have to say I'm not horribly surprised. Though, I will say, younger or older, most people don't correctly wear their contacts, and I think it's fairly same for the 20(s) and the 40+(s) as far as Glasses and Contacts, most everyone that has contacts at lest has some glasses as backup.