Eyes, E-Readers and Evolution

Another reason why sometimes it's hard to find the drive to write is that it requires looking at a screen. We spend so much of our time with eyes on screens, constantly focusing and re-focusing because of the changing brightness presented to us. It's bad and I can really feel it some days when I've spent too long reading text, editing documents, checking images and writing content.

It's known that blue light is detrimental to the health and functioning of our eyes. And it's entirely provable: spend a day in front of your laptop, reading, writing, watching and then head outside. You'll notice that your further distance vision is slightly blurry and it takes your eyes longer to focus on things. This is focusing fatigue, caused by the muscles that work to focus your sight having to react to the light coming off your screen, which tends to be bright and change a lot.

I notice this on some days, especially when I've spent a long time indoors and haven't given my eyes the time off from focusing on close objects and screens. Read about it online and you'll find various tips and suggestions. The best one is simply to stop using devices, but as we know that just isn't feasible in this day and age. Working, relaxing, shopping, socialising, catching up on news and so on, is all comprised of screen viewing. Spending more time outdoors is, however, a good remedy.

Keeping your devices further away from you can help, as does having the right glasses with an anti-reflective coating, that is if you need eyewear. You might also have heard of the 20/20/20 rule. This advises having a break from looking at your screen every 20 minutes for at least 20 seconds whilst looking at something in the distance which at least 20ft away (6m for lovers of the metric system but I'm afraid that spoils the catchiness somewhat).

I'm a big fan of the Kindle e-reader with its ink display, despite mine recently suffering from a few issues displaying the text clearly. But it's a great invention and a real relief for eyes, although so is a regular book. Unfortunately, it doesn't do images well and is no replacement for a computer.

So our eyes will be getting worse for the foreseeable future, until they invent another type of eye-friendly multi-purpose screen or until the human race evolves. We will have to wait and see which comes first.