How to Relieve Digital Eye Strain?
If you're surrounded by a variety of monitors, are your eyes, neck, and shoulders getting overly tired? If these are happening to you, take immediate steps to address them.
Staring at the screens of computers, cell phones, game consoles, and other electronic devices for long periods of time produces digital eye strain, dry eyes, eye pain, and an inability to tolerate bright lights, among other medical symptoms known as computer vision syndrome. Doctors estimate that at least nearly 80 million people in the United States may have these symptoms. It is important to address these symptoms properly, as ignoring the problem can be extremely damaging to mental and physical health. For people who must work on computers, these problems are often unavoidable. However, there are many ways to alleviate these problems, and the effects vary from person to person, but if you can try them one by one, you will undoubtedly experience a more comfortable digital life.
1. Reduce screen reflection
When you work on the computer, will there be sunlight or light from behind to the screen, making it difficult to read? In this case, the light reflected from the monitor will further distract your attention and aggravate eye fatigue. For common tasks using a computer, a non-glare panel LCD monitor that does not reflect light is easier to use. If this is the case, consider changing the room layout or applying a low-reflection film to the screen.
2. Check your MacBook/Monitor brightness settings
Instead of using the default settings, the brightness of your monitor should be adjusted according to the brightness in the room. This can provide you with great relief from eye strain. For example, in an office with a normal brightness of 300-500 lumens, the monitor brightness should be adjusted to about 100-150 cd/m2.
However, most people do not understand the meaning of such numbers. So, you must remember that a tip for adjusting brightness is to use a piece of white paper, for example, copy paper. Compare the paper to the screen under room lighting and adjust the brightness of the monitor so that the monitor brightness is as close as possible to the brightness of the paper. This will make the brightness basically at the right level.
3. Minimize the blue light of the monitor
There are many LCD monitors with LED backlighting that have high color temperature displays (bluish whites), and users receive more blue light than ordinary monitors, so this type of issue has come under more scrutiny.
Solutions to this problem include wearing anti-blue light-blocking glasses or applying a film that absorbs blue light to the LCD. Also, on monitors where the picture quality can be adjusted, the color temperature of the display can be lowered.
For example, experimental results show that if the color temperature of 6,500-7,000K used in ordinary monitors is adjusted to 5,000K, the 400-500nm wavelength of light corresponding to blue light can be reduced by about 20%. In addition, by adjusting the screen brightness to an appropriate level that does not cause eye fatigue, a total of 60–70% of blue light can be reduced. The anti-blue light blackout glasses mentioned above can only reduce blue light by 50%, so this method is more effective in comparison.
4. Relax your eyes properly
Even if the MacBook is installed in the correct position and you are viewing the monitor in the correct position, keeping the same position for a long time can be detrimental to your eyes. The reason for this is that watching an object at a fixed distance for a sustained period of time will result in a decreasing ability of the eyes to focus.
You should take a break of at least 10–15 minutes every hour. You can look into the distance and rotate your eyes up and down to adjust your focus. Regular use of eye drops may also help.
