How long have you sat in front of a screen today?
If you do the calculations, you may be surprised. Students are experiencing more screen time than usual as online classes continue.
“I think I’m spending my whole day on screens, except for mealtime. That’s about 12 hours,” said Penny Zhang, a first-year graduate student majoring in Digital Social Media.
As some students are finding, staring at a screen for extended periods of time can have consequences.
“Sometimes my eyes feel dry, and things go blurry occasionally,” Zhang said.
Dr. Karen Morgan, medical director of the USC Roski Eye Institute Pasadena clinic, gave some advice regarding eye protection that students can follow.
Although there are no current studies that show evidence of permanent damage to eyes from prolonged screen time, Morgan recommends people limit their cellphone and laptop use to eight hours per day. Here are a few things she suggests to prevent and reduce uncomfortableness in our eyes from extended screen time.
Adjust your surroundings
There are a few ways that you can do to alter your environment and make your eyes more comfortable for working in front of a screen.
First, always make sure that your light does not hit you directly in the eyes. When there is too much natural light, stay in the shade, or use matte screen filters to decrease the light glare on your screen.
The position of your screen also matters. Ideally, the screen should be about 25 inches away from your face, and 10 to 15 degrees below eye level.
When reading for extended periods of time, black words on a white background would be the best choice. Also, the text size should be approximately three times larger than the smallest text size that you can read.
Night mode helps
According to Morgan, turning on night mode for your devices a few hours before sleep improves our sleeping experience by potentially reducing the blue light that stimulates our eyes.
Instead of working on computer screens, Morgan believes that reading books - actual paper ones, that is - two hours before you sleep would be a better option. E-ink screens are also helpful because “the experience is much more like paper and ink than traditional devices,” and they have been found to reduce eye fatigue compared to LCD.
What about blue light glasses?
Nowadays, blue-light glasses are widely available in optical shops and online. They are claimed to be helpful in blocking or filtering the blue light with their specially crafted lenses. They are sometimes considered useful in protecting people’s eyes from being hurt by blue lights.
However, Morgan told us that blue-light glasses “have not been particularly well studied at all,” and the evidence is “more anecdotal.” But from her own experience, wearing blue-light glasses does reduce eye strains and the reflective coating on spectacles helps.
Avoid using contact lenses for now
Morgan said she has stopped wearing contact lenses in an effort to stay safe during COVID-19.
“We are studying now if the virus is detectable in the tear film, and the concern is that when you insert your contact lenses, your hands aren’t very clean," she said.
As a result, the virus could enter your eyes during that insertion. Morgan suggests all contact lens wearers switch back to glasses for the time being.
Blink more, and blink completely
Viewing digital devices decreases the human blink by half, according to Morgan. If you are not blinking, your tear film is not smeared, causing your cornea to be dry and your eyes to feel uncomfortable.
One way to deal with that is to follow the “20s:" every 20 minutes, look 20 feet away for 20 seconds. During that time, be intentional in blinking your eyes frequently and forcefully. That does not necessarily mean to squeeze your eyes, but to remember that you’ll have to completely close your eyes for a full blink. Morgan noted that many people are not blinking completely.
Simple eye protection actions can also be beneficial
Some eye protection actions may take a shorter time than you think, but turn out to be more beneficial than you expect.
“Warm compress is comforting”, said Morgan. “You take a clean wash rag and put it under hot water and rinse it out, and put it on your closed eyes for 3 to 5 minutes, and do this twice a day.” The washrag can be cleaned in the laundry and reused on a daily basis.
If you are experiencing dry eye symptoms, Morgan recommends using preservative-free artificial tears for a couple of times every day, that can be found in most pharmacies.
Train your eyes for long time close viewing
The remote learning life has also increased our time spent on close viewing, and our eyes need to be trained to better adapt to that. When we view an object up close for a long time, our eyes forcefully accommodate themselves to fuse the images that each of them sees into one, which, as Morgan explained, almost goes into a spasm. In medical terms, this is called an “accommodated spasm.”
One way to train our eyes to be more comfortable with viewing an object closely for a longer period of time is by using a pencil. To do so, first, hold the pencil at an arm’s length and focus on it with two eyes. Then slowly bring the pencil in closer towards you until it starts to “split into two.” Keep doing so for 15 times a day to strengthen your eyes’ ability to focus up close for a longer period of time.