How does looking at your phone screen affect your eyes?

When a person looks at the phone screen for more than 8 hours a day, the structure of the eye changes, and this causes Blurred vision Headache, dehydration and nausea, and experts suggest doing some exercises to combat dehydration, and the report published by Indiatoday provides it.

The increase in exposure to screen time has caused an alarming rise in the number of people with a visual impairment, and there are more than 2.2 billion people with near or far vision impairment globally, according to a 2021 report from the World Health Organization (WHO).

While many factors affect eye health, looking at cell phones and screens indicates many problems with a person’s eyesight, including headaches, blurred vision, and nausea.

According to Dr Amrita Kapoor Chaturvedi, Senior Consultant, Department of Ophthalmology, when a person looks at a screen for more than 8 hours a day, the eye changes structurally and stimulates eyeball length growth.

Experts shared that during the Covid-19 pandemic, there was a significant increase in cases of children suffering from myopia, a common vision condition in which close objects appear clear but distant objects appear blurry, and Dr. Chaturvedi shared that he believes that the child’s visual strength will stabilize following the age of 18. But recently the prescriptions for glasses keep increasing until the age of 20-25, Dr. Chaturvedi said children who already have glasses have increased their strength a lot due to the online lessons on the pandemic.

How to keep your eyes healthy?

Restricting screen time is the only solution to keep the eyes healthy, but Dr. Chaturvedi recommends that if someone has to work in front of a screen for a long time, there are a few tips one can keep in mind to avoid eye strain.

Dr Chaturvedi said, “Restrict social media browsing. Even following work, people tend to spend a lot of time on social media, which increases their screen time more than 7-8 hours a day, if you have to work on a screen.” Working on a bigger screen is always better.

Use a desktop instead of a mobile device or laptop. Watching on a small screen means that the distance is shorter. The closer the screen, the greater the pressure. If the screen is larger, you can work at a greater distance. You can as you increase font size,” said Dr. Chaturvedi, take frequent breaks, and follow the 20-20-20 rule.

Take a 20-second break every 20 minutes. Put a reminder on your screen or on your phone, something that tells you that you need to step away from your screen following every 20 minutes. Look at least 6 meters away from the screen for half a minute.

The American Optometric Association recommends the 20/20/20 rule: Look away from the screen every 20 minutes, and focus on an object at least 20 feet away, for at least 20 seconds. In addition, children should stay away from the screen for at least 10 minutes every hour.

So use some kind of moisturizing eye drop, Dr. Chaturvedi added. Looking at a screen leads to dehydration, so using eye drops recommended by a doctor can help.