Name: Here's Why Staring at Screens Makes Your Eyes Ache—and What to Do About It
Brand: gq.com
SKU: gq-com-6
Availability: OnlineOnly

critic

Here's Why Staring at Screens Makes Your Eyes Ache—and What to Do About It

preview

Who among us hasn’t looked up after hours of work—or a session of scrolling Instagram—with a pair of dry, strained, bloodshot eyes? Naturally, has become a simmering anxiety for many who rely on screens for a paycheck and a for parents of digital-native children. We’ve now arrived at the commercial opportunism phase. Blue light blocking glasses promise to protect us from possible macular degeneration and eye strain, and they come in all the usual flavors of branding from fancy () to —TIJN, FEYOLD, and ANRRI?We’ll save you the $100 or so: “There's no evidence whatsoever that these blue blocking lenses reduce eye strain at all,” says Mark Rosenfield, a professor at the SUNY College of Optometry. “It was a question of people putting two and two together and making five.” Screens do give off blue light, and people do get eye strain from screens. But… there’s no evidence that it’s the blue light causing it.There are more misconceptions where that came from. In fact, if you’re at all nervous that regular laptop use will make your precious 20/20 eyeballs leak from your sockets (not speaking from personal experience or anything), you’d be better off staring at your screen right now to learn how your eyes actually work.As far as research has shown, digital eye strain is nothing more than a set of short-term symptoms. “There's no evidence that it causes either long term damage to the eyes or a change in prescription,” Rosenfield says. Still, hours of computer use definitely tires out eyes. It just has less to do with technology itself than the kind of work we do on screens.Looking at something up close is known as near work: our eyes turn inward in order to focus. So reading or focusing on something in front of us, printed or digital, taxes our eyes. We also tend to when doing that kind of work, which dries our eyes. The problem is we tend to look at screens for way longer than printed materials—like, . So the discomfort we feel is probably the same kind we’d feel if we read Moby Dick in one sitting. It just seems like it’s our computer’s fault.So maybe you still feel tethered to reading a Moby Dick’s worth of emails and hot takes every day. Fine! You’re still not cursed to a lifetime of desperate Visine overuse, but you need to find ways to give your eyes a break. Follow the 20-20-20 rule: every 20 minutes, stare at something at least 20 feet away for at least 20 seconds. It works!While you’re doing that, take note of the window situation in your office. Does your computer screen face a bright window and bounce glare into your face? That makes it harder for your eyes to focus. So does any great difference between your office’s and computer’s brightness. The problem is less if your screen is too bright on its own—you’ll immediately feel uncomfortable staring at it, if so—but how much your eyes have to adjust looking back and forth between the two. “We generally recommend the difference between the brightest and darkest area of the room shouldn't be more than a three to one ratio,” Rosenfield says. Raise those blinds or turn on some lamps.Consider, too, how close your screens get to your face. Our eyes have to focus harder on things closer to them, and of course on smaller text. That’s why looking at a phone for hours probably feels more tiring than looking at a desktop for the same amount of time—with computers, the text is probably bigger and the screen farther away (the ideal distance is about 16 inches).It’s also possible that you’re overlooking other reasons for your eye problems. Dry eyes may be partly the fault of your office’s aggressive HVAC situation. Your glasses may be causing problems too—conventional bifocals in particular are made for looking down while reading. Looking up at a computer means you won’t be looking through the right part of the lenses. If you wear glasses, don’t be afraid of oversharing with your optometrist: tell them how much time you read on screens, how far away you’re sitting from your screen, and if you use multiple computer monitors, that could mean you need a wider lens for a wider reading area.We do not endorse excessive screen time for . And like so many problems in the wider world of wellness, achy eyes boils down to a big, simple issue, something you probably already know in your heart to be true: you probably need to unplug from work or your phone more frequently than you currently do. “There’s no question that people are uncomfortable looking at these things, and you can tell people to take breaks, but they just don't,” Rosenfield says. Researchers may one day still come up with a better eye drop or treatment for the symptoms of digital eye strain, he says. But until then, spending more time staring into space sounds incredibly smart.

Who among us hasn’t looked up after hours of work—or a session of scrolling Instagram—with a pair of dry, strained, bloodshot eyes? Naturally, has become a simmering anxiety for many who rely on screens for a paycheck and a for parents of digital-native children. We’ve now arrived at the commercial opportunism phase. Blue light blocking glasses promise to protect us from possible macular degeneration and eye strain, and they come in all the usual flavors of branding from fancy () to —TIJN, FEYOLD, and ANRRI?We’ll save you the $100 or so: “There's no evidence whatsoever that these blue...

Here's Why Staring at Screens Makes Your Eyes Ache—and What to Do About It

No article scores yet.

CRITIC REVIEWS

PUBLIC REVIEWS