Modern people are so interbedded with technology for work, education, or entertainment. Being busy with technological devices for extended periods has drawbacks, just like when anything is overused, especially for eye health. One of the most common ailments one can experience is "eye strain."
A pair of strained eyes
What is Eye Strain, and How Does It Develop?
Eye strain occurs if you concentrate on something with your eyes for an extended period, whether playing video games, reading books and newsletters, or even driving long distances within breaks (Healthdirect, n.d.). However, we will primarily focus on digital eye strain throughout this piece.
Eye strain develops due to several reasons. One of the most common reasons is dehydration of the eyes. When we concentrate on something, we tend to blink at much longer intervals than usual, approximately 12 times a minute (Kwon et al., 2013). Flashing is essential for eye health because human eyes should always be appropriately moisturized to function normally.
To reduce eye strain from the use of technological devices, you might want to take a few actions that aim to ease the discomfort one might get from overexposure to digital screens. Let's have a look at what we can do in our checklist:
How to Minimize Digital Eye Strain? A To-Do List That Might Be Helpful
1. Having Little Breaks to Rest Your Eyes
Our first bullet point might not seem practical in minimizing eye strain, but it is. Since having breaks every hour from technology will reset the focus of eyes to how they were before you begin to use them, it will prevent "extended" focus. Therefore, it is incredibly beneficial. If you wonder how long a break should be, it is up to you to decide. Just be sure that when you return to studying again, you feel little to no discomfort in your eyes.
However, even though rest is the main problem, some of us work jobs requiring us to be in front of the computer almost every moment, and we might not be able to create a break for ourselves to ease the discomfort in our eyes. This is where lighting and environment gain critical importance. So let's talk about them.
2. Lighting and Environment
Lighting and environment are two factors that seem less important than they are when preventing eye strain. These factors are essential because of the leading cause of eye strain, which is the discomfort of the eyes, as we already mentioned before. There are a few beneficial practices regarding lighting and the environment.
2.1 Lighting
To minimize the discomfort while using technology, you have to ensure that your brightness level is optimal, neither dim nor dazzling; otherwise, your eyes could easily have trouble concentrating. To prevent distractions that might arise from the lighting in your environment, it is advised to place the light source behind you so that it enlightens whatever you are busy with.
There is another aspect to this that is notable, which is blue light. "Blue light is part of the visible light spectrum, and it has the shortest wavelength and highest energy among them" (University of California, Davis Health, 2022, "Blue Light Effects," para. 3). Therefore, extended exposure to it is considered dangerous to human health as it has lots of side effects, some of the common ones being sleeping disorders and nausea. Since the lighting of our technological devices contains blue lights, we might want to avoid prolonged exposure to them, especially during long sessions of studying and work. Two standard solutions to that problem are using night shifts or blue light glasses.
Night Shift is software in our modern technological devices that changes the color to warmer tones to reduce glare and contrast (Hazanchuk, 2019). This helps to improve focus and reduce eye strain. It also helps alleviate blue light-induced sleeping problems. "The reason why is that when a person is exposed to bright lights at night, their body can react as if it was exposed to sunlight: The brain stops producing melatonin, the sleep hormone, and we feel more awake" (Hazanchuk, American Academy of Ophthalmology, 2019).
Difference in display made by Night Shift
Blue light glasses are also very effective tools to counter the harmful effects of blue light, protect our eye health, and reduce eye strain. Blue lightweight glasses are designed to filter out blue lights to some extent to reduce their side effects. Using one myself, I can say they are practical tools.
2.2 Environment
While working with electronic devices, your environment also matters as humans respond to stimulations in their environment and adapt to certain conditions. In our case, we will discuss the importance of keeping distractions away and the significance of how much moisture our environment is in reducing eye strain. So, let's elaborate further!
Keeping distractions away from your work environment matters, not just while using technology but on every occasion that calls for you to maintain your focus because, as humans, we respond to changes in our environment, such as movement, color, sound, and reflection. This means our eyes would unintentionally change rapidly in minimal intervals to observe our environment due to our survival instincts. These rapid shifts in focus harm the eyes because they will make it harder for us to concentrate, leading to eye strain. This is because our eyes and brain want to maintain focus at all costs, so they will become more tired than they should. This is why you should always work somewhere without distractions if you can.
Another factor that should be considered is how moist the environment is. As previously mentioned, moisture in the eyes is of critical importance in eye health. Since we tend to blink less while focused on something, working in a humid environment may prevent our eyes from drying up and prevent us from being diagnosed with conditions like dry eye disease in the long run. You can also use moisturizing eye drops under the supervision of a doctor. It would be best to study somewhere that doesn't have air currents or is windy as this makes it harder for your eyes to focus and, therefore, will contribute to eye strain (Healthdirect, n.d.).
Air humidifier
3. Working with Devices that Support Higher Frame Rates
Our last bullet point sounds a little unusual, but it is true. As technological developments arise, our devices become more user-friendly daily. One of the most prominent features of a computer that makes it user-friendly is supporting higher frame rates. We will explain why this feature contributes to reducing eye strain, but firstly, we have to define the frame rate.
3.1 What is a Frame Rate?
An electronic device works with the principle of refreshing images or, in other words, frames consecutively to display an image or animation. Frame rate represents how many frames a device displays per second to create an image on the screen and is abbreviated as FPS (Frame per Second). An average electronic device today has an FPS value of 30 or 60.
3.2 How Does Higher Frame Rate Help with Eye Strain?
The answer to that question is hidden in the process of seeing. Our brain has a part called the visual cortex. The visual cortex is the part of the brain that detects and perceives motion. National Center for Biotechnology Information (2023) explains it like this:
The primary purpose of the visual cortex is to receive, segment, and integrate visual information. The processed information from the visual cortex is subsequently sent to other brain regions for analysis and utilization. This highly specialized process allows the brain to recognize objects and patterns quickly without a significant conscious effort.
We can infer that the visual cortex tries to find a pattern of motions; in other words, it tries to define the motions. When we use technological devices, the visual cortex has to find a way to merge the frames into a motion. Each frame gives the visual cortex a clue about what the motion pattern should look like. We should reduce the burden on the visual cortex to reduce eye strain. This is where the frame rate comes into action. Since frame rate means the number of images displayed on the screen per second, more frame rate means more guidance to the visual cortex on how exactly the motion should look. So, the devices with higher frame rates than average may help reduce eye strain, especially for the prolonged use of technological devices. That is why you should buy something new if you can afford it.
Final Words
In this piece, I have compiled ways of reducing eye strain, a prevalent ailment most of us are subjected to at least once in our lifetimes in our modern world full of technology. Even though every point listed above is good practice, it is always best to rest when tired. A final warning: It is always best to consult a professional, too, so if you have any complaints about your health, always consult a professional.
Bibliography
Eye Strain. (n.d.) Healthdirect.
https://www.healthdirect.gov.au/eye-strain
Hazanchuk, V. (May 7, 2019). Should You Use Night Mode to Reduce Blue Light? American
Academy of Ophthalmology.
https://www.aao.org/eye-health/tips-prevention/should-you-use-night-mode-to-reduce-blue-light
Huff, T., Mahabadi, N., & Tadi, P. (August 14, 2023). Neuroanatomy, Visual Cortex. National Center for Biotechnology Information.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK482504/#:~:text=Introduction,posterior%20region%20of%20the%20brain, Accessed September 18, 2023.
Kwon, K. A., Shipley, R. J., Edirisinghe, M., Ezra, D. G., Rose, G., Best, S. M., & Cameron, R. E. (2013). High-speed camera characterization of voluntary eye blinking kinematics. Journal of the Royal Society, Interface, 10(85), 20130227.
https://doi.org/10.1098/rsif.2013.0227
University of California, Davis Health. (August, 2022). Blue Light Effects on Your Eyes, Sleep, and Health. Cultivating Health Blog.