Our world has been transformed with the arrival of computers and mobile phones. Thanks to technological advancements, we live in a world where everything is easily accessible, faster, cheaper and quicker. Unfortunately, all this advancement has come at a cost, our health. And vision-related ill-effects from computers and mobile devices must be guarded against.
So what exactly are the ill-effects of computers and mobile phones on our eyes and our vision? Let us take the computer to start with. Computers, their screens to be more specific, are made up of thousands of tiny pixels that are constantly moving. Our eyes in turn are not naturally able to set focus on these constantly moving pixels, and hence we try to focus on an area behind the actual screen. Therefore, in order to work on a computer, our eyes need to keep on fluctuating focus between their natural point of focus and the pixels on the screen. And this tires the eyes and causes a lot of wear and tear.
As a result, we suffer from irritation, which may range from a number of things like headaches, dry eyes, blurred vision, problems in focusing and faulty color perception, to something as severe as glaucoma. How does one avoid this? One must reduce the intensity of the computer’s screen by attaching a filter or by getting an eye-friendly screen. Above all, one must try to reduce the amount of computer usage or take frequent breaks.
Similarly with mobile phones too, the eyes suffer the most from extended usage. The electromagnetic waves that are emitted by a mobile phone can be extremely damaging to the eyes. It has been studied and well documented that these cell phone waves can have a damaging effect on the various parts of the eye, including the retina and the cornea. Moreover, they can cause cataract too.
That is just the fall out from the waves of the cell phone. The cell phone screen itself has its own pitfalls that are similar to the ill-effects caused by computer screens. Only in this case, the strain is of a different kind because cell phone screens are much smaller than computer screens. So not only are the eyes dealing with the pixels, but are inherently stressing to be able to view content on a tiny screen too.
The solution again is reduced usage. There is nothing more effective than controlling usage to reduce and negate the effects. To say that we can now lead our lives without computers and mobile devices would be a fallacy. But at least we can protect ourselves by being judicious about their usage.
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