National Love Your Eyes Day: Keeping Your Eyes Safe from Screens

Our daily usage of smartphones and tablets, as well as the time we spend in front of TV and computer screens, seems to have sky-rocketed in the past few years. According to a study by audience data analysts Verto Analytics, mobile users in China spend an average of 49 hours every month looking at their smartphones, while usage is around 45 hours per month in the USA.

What effect are all these screens having on our eyes? We’ve all felt strain or a slight headache from time to time, so should we be worried about further damage to our sight? Here, we answer some of your burning questions about keeping your eyes safe through the digital age.

Do electronic screens cause near-sightedness?

First, let's talk about the connection between smartphones and tablets and myopia (near-sightedness). Scientists have not yet produced any conclusive findings about such a connection. In fact, in recent years, several studies have shown that the most important cause of myopia is genetics. If both parents are myopic, the child is four times more likely to be near-sighted; if one parent is myopic, the child is twice as likely to be near-sighted.

Myopia has gradually become more prevalent around the world. A British study found that in addition to educational level, socioeconomic status, and genes, another factor that affects vision is if your mother was older or smoking when pregnant, or if you experienced growth delays in the womb.

Many parents worry that their children will harm their eyes by watching TV or playing on the computer too much. To date, there has not been a rigorous investigation into how or whether computer or TV screens impact vision and the fact is that anything you visually focus on and put close to your eyes – whether it’s books, a television, computers, art, or even embroidery – will cause the eyes to tire and eventually become fatigued. Anything held and focused on within 50 cm of our eyes tires them. To rest our eyes, it is best to focus on and hold objects more than 50 cm away from our eyes.

What is the science of myopia?

When we start focusing our vision closer and closer to our noses, our lines of sight converge and the lens of our eye starts to lose its original shape. These processes are involuntary but inevitable if you use your eye muscles to force your eyes to focus for a long time without relaxing.

Sometimes, people can develop pseudomyopia, becoming near-sighted for a short period of time after a long period of focusing on one thing. This happens because the eye muscles become fatigued, causing your eyes to be temporarily incapable of lining up the information each eye receives. If we get too engrossed in a TV show or a computer program, we are preventing our eyes from relaxing.

How can I alleviate eye strain?

Smartphones, tablets, and e-books have a special display technology that simulates real ink or that automatically adjusts the screen’s brightness according to ambient light. To a certain extent, this technology can help reduce eye strain while reading. However, given the ever-increasing amount of time we all spend glued to our phones, we should also take the following approaches to alleviate visual fatigue and prevent myopia:

1. Try doing some eye massages by pressing on pressure points around the eye. Most Chinese students could show you how to do an eye massage.

2. Relax the eye muscles. Every 20 minutes spent on a computer should be rewarded with a 20-second break during which you focus on something 5 or more meters away.

3. Adjust the height of the screen so that it is 5-40 degrees below eye level.

4. Adjust the brightness of the screen so that it does not contrast too much with the environmental brightness around you.

5. Make yourself blink periodically.

6. Adjust text on your computer so that your eyes feel comfortable when you read.

7. If you need to, wear progressive lenses for focusing on objects at various distances.

How much screen time is safe for my eyes?

After learning that electronic screens themselves do not have a direct impact on vision – time and distance do the damage, not the screen itself – parents usually ask the question "How long should I allow my child to watch TV or play on the computer for?" There’s no standard answer to this question, as vision and visual development depend on genes, the child’s environment, stress, outdoor activities, and a host of other things.

How much time each child can spend looking at a screen without impairing their vision is difficult to generalize. Parents need to exercise discretion in managing their child's vision and visual habits. Ophthalmologists encourage children to avoid screens as much as possible and instead head outdoors to play, as this benefits a child's all-around health, as well as being fairly harmless visually.

If you have any questions about eye care and health, you can make an appointment with a BJU ophthalmologist at [phone] or 4008-919191.

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