In this digital age, there’s no denying that there are benefits to integrating digital technologies into our daily lives. In a previous post, we highlighted how generative AI chatbot ChatGPT can transform healthcare, from transcribing notes for medical professionals to providing personalized assistance by assessing patients’ symptoms. Beyond healthcare, digital innovations also introduce various benefits like convenience, speed, and accuracy for tasks at work, consuming media, and other activities.
However, heavy digital device use also comes with certain downfalls. For one, spending all day in front of a computer, laptop, or even our smartphones has been proven to make us more sedentary, which can cause physical health issues in the long term. Another health risk that prolonged digital device use poses concerns our eyes and vision. Studies over the years have shown that heavy digital device use can lead to vision discomfort, pain, eye strain, and other symptoms.
Fortunately, there are several vision and eye care practices you can do to better protect your eyes. This is especially important if your work and daily tasks involve heavy computer, tablet, or smartphone use. Below, we’ll be sharing some essential eye care tips for heavy computer users:
Update your prescription
For people with vision issues, wearing glasses can help provide clarity and prevent straining or squinting. Unfortunately, wearing glasses is only the first step. It’s important to update your prescription to ensure you can always see well. While wearing glasses with an outdated prescription won’t necessarily harm your eyes, it can cause vision issues such as blurriness and discomfort.
Luckily, online eyewear retailers nowadays make it easy for you to get your glasses updated. Retailer Frames Direct offers prescription eye glasses from top brands like Ray-Ban and Oakley, with a customer service team backed by certified opticians. These qualified opticians help ensure the prescription you entered contains accurate information and will work with your preferred lenses. For heavy computer users specifically, you may also want to check out BlueReflect™ Lenses options to help reduce blue light exposure.
Consider blue light protection
Speaking of reducing blue light exposure, studies over the years have agreed that blue light may be a health hazard to our eyes and vision. Wearing blue light blocking eyewear, such as glasses and contact lenses, has been shown to reduce visual discomfort and digital eye strain symptoms. Meanwhile, research from 2022 suggests that constant exposure to blue light can also cause vision problems such as age-related macular degeneration.
If you don’t need glasses for vision correction or don’t like wearing them while working at the computer, you can also consider changing your digital device settings. Many electronics today have different settings to help reduce blue light, such as screen settings to tone down brightness and adjust contrast. Major computer operating software like Windows and Mac also have “night mode” settings for compatible devices, which can help ease eye strain by reducing blue light.
Keep your eyes lubricated
Finally, one of the best ways to care for your eyes and vision is to stay hydrated. When you’re dehydrated, your eyes produce fewer tears. This leads to dry eyes and irritation. Sufficient tear production is also crucial for flushing out dust and debris, which can help prevent irritation and possible infection.
Drinking enough water in between computer work sessions is the best way to stay hydrated. If you still feel like your eyes easily dry while working, however, you can also keep a bottle of eye drops handy. Eye care company Alcon has developed lubricating eye drops called the Systane Complete Preservative-Free Lubricant eye drops. These are designed to give eight hours of dry eye symptom relief with just one drop, making it a longer-lasting alternative to other eye drops on the market.
Ultimately, while digital technology is certainly helpful in our daily lives, it’s also important that we take better care of our vision and eye health when using digital devices for extended periods.
If you found this post useful or interesting, you can check out more posts on our homepage, where we also post guides and tips for using the DragGan AI tool.