For most people interacting with computers and televisions is a staple of everyday life. For example, some of us always get ready in the morning while having news on the TV. Some of us work in offices facing computer screens all the time, while others spend their spare time enjoying scrolling through social media.
Hence screens are always sticking to our eyes, and it has reached a scary level now. But is all of this screen addiction affecting our sight? And how do computer screens affect our eyes?
Let Us See How Ambient Lighting Affects Our Eyes, And Factors Strain Your Eyes.
Many studies have shown that working with the backlight displays in bad lighting conditions or having glare reflecting over the screen may cause serious eye strain. While this may not look like a problem after only a few minutes, it may lead to having sore eyes, blurry vision, and headaches if you continue it for long.
Luckily, many new technologies are all coming out to fight off this issue. But you need first to understand why our eyes suffer the strain in the first place when you look at lighted displays in poor lighting cases.
If you want to reduce computer eye strain and wish to use your screens without having a huge impact on your eyes, then you can apply the following tips:
- Adjust the ambient lights in the room. Brighter overhead lighting may worsen your eye strain from the monitor; hence you need to turn off any overhead lights when you can and use the desk lamps instead to light up the space from the sides instead. You should close any blinds directly in front of you to keep the sun away from sight.
- Light up the workspace properly. Though bright ambient lighting worsens your eye strain, working in darker spaces does the same. Aim to have a room equal in brightness to your computer screen.
- Move your monitor away from your chair or relax and sit back from the desk. The suggested distance is 18 to 24 inches. The more away you are from the monitor, the less strain your eyes suffer from the screen.
- Increase the size of the fonts so that reading the text is a lot more comfortable and your eyes don’t have to focus more. You may boost the size of your computer screens by holding the Control key and pressing + as many times as you need. Most productivity software programs allow you to increase the font sizes and boost the seeing percentage to 200%.
- Recognize the glare that is reflecting from your monitor by turning the screen off and by checking what reflected that light you are seeing. Angle the monitor to get rid of the glare as much as you can, or you can buy the glare shield too.
- You can turn down the monitor brightness if you think it is too bright for you to use it. Note that there is a contrast setting in many monitors that adjust the light level more than the brightness setting.
These are some ways computer eye strain can be controlled and reduced to a minimum. Computer screen eye strain affects many people, and it should be taken seriously as it may lead to serious eye-health issues.