A recent survey shows that over 80 percent of participants use their smartphones before sleep, and even when they are tired, more than 80 percent persist in scrolling through their smartphone screens.
Lying down while playing on the phone may not be too tiring to your body, but it is to your eyes. Your body can recover fairly quickly, but not your eyes.
Harmful behaviors
If you are constantly on your smartphone, be aware of these three things because they harm your eyes.
1. Lying down
When nestled under the covers in bed, you curl up and use your hands to hold your smartphone in front of you. Does it ever occur to you how close your eyes are to the screen? If you were that close when you watched TV when you were a young child, wouldn’t your parents have scolded you at once for being too close to the screen?
When you sit and play with your smartphone, the distance between your eyes and the smartphone is about 12-16 inches. When you lie down and play with your smartphone (especially for nearsighted people who will take off their glasses), whether lying on your back, front, or side, the distance is only 8 inches or even less.
The closer the screen is to your eyes, the more frequent adjustments your eyes have to make and the pressure on the eye muscles is excessive. That is why your eyes get tired more easily.
Physically, what you feel is that the eyes are tired. What you cannot feel is that many of the optic functions are deteriorating, with results such as taking longer to focus and experiencing blurry vision when looking at things up close.
2. Lights off
The pupils adjust according to the amount of light. They contract when the light is strong and dilate when the light is weak.
If you lie down and play on your smartphone in the dark, your pupils will dilate to allow more light in. The brightness of the screen, however, will make the pupils contract to block out excessive light. Do you think your pupils will dilate and contract at the same time? They won’t. They will keep dilating and then contracting over and over again, which will tire out your eyes. Looking at your smartphone screen in a dark environment will also create subtle changes in the eyes. It can affect the balance of fluid flowing in and out of the eyes, and even result in an increase in eye pressure.
If you were born with severe farsightedness, structural optic abnormalities, or have a family history of glaucoma, you may develop acute glaucoma, which is a disease that can lead to blindness.
3. Playing for a long time
Every time you blink, tears are evenly applied to the cornea to keep it moist and working properly. However, this film only lasts for a short time and soon breaks down. That is why you have to blink 10 to 20 times a minute to keep the surface of your eyes from drying out.
When you are attracted to your smartphone and cannot take your eyes away, you blink less often. The lack of tear film protection on the eye surface may cause stinging and dryness. Over time, it may lead to abnormal tear secretions, reduce the stability of the tear film, and result in dry eyes, which aggravates eye fatigue.
Tips to minimize harm
If you start to worry about your eyes and yet cannot quit playing on your smartphone before going to sleep, we suggest the following tips to minimize the harm.
1. Switch on a desk lamp
Playing on your smartphone in the dark hurts your eyes. If the ceiling light is too bright, you can switch on a bedside lamp or desk lamp. The point is not to make the screen the only light source. Dim down the screen, or turn on the night mode to allow the screen to adjust itself.
2. Sit up
Since lying down to use your smartphone brings it too close, why not sit up to maintain the distance?
If you use your smartphone to watch videos, why not use a stand and set the stand a bit farther to keep a suitable distance?
You can also change to a larger screen, such as a tablet, which is more suitable for watching from a distance.
3. Blink more
To avoid dry eyes, first of all, remind yourself that you have to blink more. If you still have dry eyes, you can check out the humidity — is the room too dry? If so, get a humidifier.
The 20-20-20 rule
Remember this rule: For every 20 minutes you spend on your smartphone screen, take a 20-second break to look at something 20 feet away.
These rules will help protect your eyes for both daytime and nighttime reading.
