Computers, cell phones, and tablets play a significant role in most people’s everyday lives. From working and studying to scrolling social media and watching movies, screen time fills a significant percentage of many device owners’ days. While these devices have nearly unlimited benefits, it is also important to be diligent about reducing their impact on your eyes. Scheduling annual eye exams with an Optometrist can be a helpful step in making sure that you are doing everything you can to make your screen time easier on your eyes and support your overall eye health.
This article provides some helpful strategies for making screen time more comfortable and enjoyable by reducing eye strain, blue light exposure, and other potential concerns.
Recognize Signs of Eye Strain
Some signs of eye strain can look similar to more serious eye problems or unrelated health conditions. This means that knowing what to look for is key when it comes to spotting eye strain early on and taking steps to build a healthier relationship with your screens, especially during allergy or cold and flu season.
The most common things to look for when monitoring your vision and comfort for eye strain include:
- Unusually dry eyes
- Tired, sore, red, or otherwise irritated eyes
- Blurred vision
- A headache, especially one that is particularly close to the eyes
Understanding what eye strain typically looks like can help you work on finding solutions more quickly than you might if you thought that allergies or another issue was the source of your discomfort. You may also notice that your phone, laptop, or another type of screen causes more problems for you than others. This may mean that adjusting how you use that particular screen and moving some of your work or entertainment to another device that works better for you can significantly reduce your discomfort.
Reduce Blue Light Exposure
Blue light is one of the most significant problems associated with extended screen exposure. Much like sunlight, blue light can boost your mood and increase focus. It also has similar negative effects, such as disrupting sleep and being harder on your eyes than most other types of everyday light sources. While most other types of light-related eye strain only result in momentary issues that resolve themselves, prolonged blue light exposure is capable of causing irreversible eye damage over time.
Some helpful tips for reducing blue light exposure include:
- Adding a screen protector that blocks blue light to your device
- Using night mode or a similar setting to reduce the amount of blue light your screen emits
- Using another type of blue light blocking software
- Reducing screen time shortly before bed to avoid sleep disruptions
- Wearing blue light glasses that filter this type of light or adding this feature to your regular prescription glasses
- Supplementing your device adjustments with low-blue light bulbs for your lamps and other lights in your home
Choose Quality Screens
High-resolution screens tend to be more comfortable for your eyes than older CRT screens because they provide a cleaner and more natural reading and working experience. While you may not always have a high level of control over the specific types of computers or other devices you must use at work, being intentional about ensuring that any home computers or other personal devices you use have quality screens can make using them for hours at a time easier on your eyes.
Quality screens offer several benefits including:
- Significantly higher refresh rates that eliminate the majority of the “flickering” and choppy reading that characterize older or low-quality screens
- Significantly more pixels, which provide a cleaner and more cohesive viewing experience that is often much easier on your eyes than seeing individual dots
- More vivid colors with better contrast to make it easier for your eyes to distinguish various types of text, images, and other elements of the websites or other programs you are using from one another
Find the Best Balance Between Screen Brightness and Surrounding Lighting
Making sure that the appearance and functionality of your screen make sense for your environment can go a long way toward making it easier to see. Much like trying to use most types of screens in direct sunlight is quite difficult and not sustainable for more than a few minutes, using lights that are noticeably brighter than your screen can overstimulate your eyes. Instead, starting by setting your screen at a comfortable brightness and opting for lamps or overhead lights that are dimmer than your screen can help your eyes focus on your screen while tuning out less-important surroundings.
Adjusting a screen to its highest brightness setting often looks the nicest as soon as you set it, but it is usually better to opt for a lower setting if you will be using your screen for more than a few minutes. Excess light that you do not notice right away can irritate your eyes significantly more after working for several hours, and reducing your screen’s brightness to the lowest setting that you can see comfortably can help you optimize the amount of light that enters your eyes. Some helpful tips for using your screen settings to your advantage include:
- Taking advantage of your device’s automatic brightness setting, which allows it to adjust its own brightness level to best match the amount of light in your environment so that you do not need to remember to do so manually
- Using a night mode setting, which allows your device to automatically adjust its brightness at specific times of day
- Increasing your text size to make it easier to read with less light
- Adding a matte screen filter to reduce glare
Keep Your Eyes Lubricated
Focusing on your work is a good thing until it causes you to forget to blink. People often blink less than half as frequently as they normally do while staring at a screen for a significant amount of time because their focus subconsciously shifts to only thinking about what they are watching or working on. Blinking approximately 5-7 times per minute instead of around 15 times under other circumstances can cause eyes to dry out more quickly than we might expect.
To help keep your eyes as moist as they should be while using a screen for a prolonged period of time, you can try:
- Making a conscious effort to remind yourself to blink more frequently by being more intentional about thinking about what is happening outside of your screen or even placing a note reminding yourself to blink near your computer
- Using artificial tears or another type of lubricating eye drops to replace the lost moisture your eyes depend on
- Using a humidifier to increase the amount of moisture in the air, which can help to keep eyes hydrated
Take Sufficient Breaks from Your Screens
Frequent breaks from your screen are a must, especially if you spend your entire workday on a computer or enjoy bingeing an entire season of your favorite show in one weekend.
A helpful strategy is following the 20-20-20 rule for giving your eyes an ample amount of rest from screens. Spending at least 20 seconds looking 20 feet beyond your screen every 20 minutes can help to refresh and reset your eyes (and your mind!) to help you stay focused.
Special Considerations for Contact Lens Wearers
Contact lenses can help you love how you look and be more convenient than glasses in many situations, but they are also naturally harder on your eyes. They often lead to increased eye dryness and soreness, especially if they are not worn or cared for properly. If you typically wear contact lenses to work or leave them in while watching hours of online videos, you may be especially likely to experience eye strain.
Here are helpful tips for contact lens wearers to reduce eye strain during screen time:
- Remove contact lenses when using a screen if you only need them to see further away
- Wear glasses to work from time to time to give your eyes a break
- Remove contact lenses to sleep, even if they were designed for extended wear
- Use high-quality contact lens solution, storage cases, and other accessories and be diligent about using them correctly and consistently
Choose Chang Eye Group to Manage Eye Health in Pittsburgh
Your screens’ role in work, education and entertainment are unlikely to change any time soon, which means that taking a proactive approach to reducing their impact on your eyes is an important step in reducing discomfort and preserving your vision. At Chang Eye Group, our top eye care specialists in Pittsburgh are here to help if you find that your eye strain is becoming more uncomfortable than you can manage on your own or lingering for a significant amount of time after you have finished your screen time. Contact us today to learn more about how we can help you reduce your screen-related eye strain or call (412) 429-2020 to schedule an appointment.
