Kids’ eyesight is getting worse. Special contact lenses may be the answer.

Doctors are looking for creative ways to solve an eye problem that is becoming more common among children and teens.

Myopia, the medical term for nearsightedness, is a vision condition where close objects look clear but far objects look blurry, said David Berntsen, professor of optometry and chair of clinical sciences at the University of Houston College of Optometry. While increased screen time could be a culprit, it’s not definitively so.

Up until now, the standard treatment for myopia was to prescribe corrective lenses. But Berntsen and a team of researchers looked into how multifocal contact lenses could slow the progression of this disease.

Myopia occurs when the shape of the eye causes light rays to bend and focus in front of the retina instead of on it. The retina is a nerve at the back of the eye that converts light into electrical signals for the brain to process into an image, according to the Mayo Clinic.

The problem typically begins in childhood. Babies are born farsighted, but vision normally corrects with growth. In kids with myopia, the eye grows too much, passing beyond the point of focusing the image.

In Berntsen’s study, nearly 300 children, ages 7 to 11, were randomly assigned to wear regular, single-vision contact lenses or multifocal lenses. After three years of wearing contacts, the children with multifocal lenses had the slowest rate of myopia progression and eye growth, according to the report published last week in JAMA Ophthalmology. Researchers also found that these benefits persisted even after discontinuing the multifocal lenses.

This could be an effective strategy in slowing myopia progression in children, Berntsen said. Especially as the problem appears to be getting worse among U.S. children.

Myopia rates in the U.S. have skyrocketed over the past 50 years, from 25% in the 1970s to nearly 42% in 2017, according to the National Eye Institute. The agency predicts half the world will be nearsighted by 2050.