 Think about how long you stare at a screen, like the one on your laptop, your phone, your TV, your tablet. Nielsen says most people spend, on average, 10 hours a day staring at a screen. Do these screens damage our eyes? I'm a blogger, and yeah, I'm definitely in front of a screen at least 10 hours a day. I grab my phone first thing in the morning, then I use it on the subway commute, all day at work, then a small break for yoga, then on the subway ride home and in bed. Am I damaging my eyes? Are you damaging your eyes? Are we doomed? Here's the good news. Screens aren't going to make us go blind. The devices that we use do not appear to cause long-term eye damage. That's Dr. Rebecca Taylor, an ophthalmologist in Nashville, Tennessee. Instead of real eye damage, you might experience some eye discomfort, like blurry vision, dry eyes, watery eyes, and tired eyes. These symptoms even have a name. It's called computer vision syndrome. I know my eyes feel heavy after a long day of staring, but a doctor isn't going to worry about my long-term health. So don't be scared by that really intense name. Still, my eyes are irritated and it's annoying. We likely experience computer vision syndrome because we blink less when we stare at a screen. According to optometrist Allison Bozung from the University of Iowa, So our blink rate slows pretty significantly in some studies up to about two-thirds, so about 67 percent slower or less blinking. And it's not easy to consciously blink more. I'm very aware of that. You'll probably look a little bit crazy if you try, so instead, use eye drops to keep your eyeballs moist. Make sure they are for that purpose and not for redness relief. Take breaks, too. Most doctors recommend the 20-20-20 rule. 20-20-20 rule. 20-20-20 rule. Which says that for every 20 minutes that you're on a computer or staring at a screen, take 20 seconds to stare at something 20 feet away. It requires more energy to focus at a near target than it does to focus at a distance target. If I was concentrating on a typewriter all day long, would I still have these same symptoms? Absolutely. So it doesn't matter what you're viewing, it matters that you're viewing. After two hours of screen time, take 15 minutes to do anything but stare at a screen. That means don't look at your phone either. Try talking to some humans. I don't know. Other, less obvious factors affect our eyes, too. It's not just the actual act of staring at a screen that's to blame for our eye problems. The tech we own and the way we use it matters, too. Our monitors can contribute to these issues. For example, if your display's refresh rate is 60 Hz, meaning it refreshes its images 60 times a second, your eyes will constantly try to refocus, meaning they'll tire out more quickly. There are muscles inside the eye. If you're going to sit down at your desk and you're going to flex your bicep for eight hours in a row, you may need a little bit of a break. The unfortunate news is that most gadgets feature displays at 60 Hz. You can try buying a new, more expensive gaming display with a faster refresh rate or a new 120 Hz iPad Pro or maybe even the Razer phone. Another, more manageable tip relates to your eye's distance from the screen. Keep your monitor an arm's length away from you, so about 25 inches, and position the screen so that you're looking down at it at a 20 degree angle. Your screen's contrast and brightness might also be worth playing around with. Increase the contrast on your screen to make the letters clearer, and don't use tiny fonts. I love tiny fonts, so I know this might be annoying aesthetically, but tiny fonts strain your eyes, so ban tiny fonts. Do not use them. Now, I haven't mentioned another big problem you might be battling, which is glare. Glare can make it difficult to stare at your screen and will additionally hurt your eyes. An anti-glare screen filter could help, as can anti-glare coatings on glasses. Also, try to avoid having extreme sunlight on your screen or harsh overhead lighting. Your screen experience is highly dependent on your environment, obviously, so you want to make it perfect. Along with glare, maybe you've heard about blue light coatings and blue light filtering glasses. They're super trendy right now, and glasses shops are often trying to convince customers to add them on to their orders. Blue light, these companies say, is a major part of the eye strain problem. But doctors have countered that these special lenses really won't do much to alleviate eye stress. There are several products out there to protect our eyes from our computer, but there's no data that supports that that is necessary. The American Academy of Ophthalmology doesn't recommend them because they won't affect your actual eye health. Like, they won't prevent macular degeneration or glaucoma. However, companies like Felix Grey, which builds blue light filtering into its lenses as opposed to relying on a coating, still says their tech helps. I met with David Roger, one of the company's co-founders, to talk about blue light filtering and how his company tries to address the eye strain problem. But if you are dealing with that 5 p.m. headache or your vision's a little bit blurry or you're just rubbing your eyes at the end of the day, blue light and glare are two of the primary reasons that people are feeling these effects. We filter out 50% of the blue light range. The thing is, there haven't been enough studies that show blue light is harmful for the eye, and David admits his glasses are for short-term comfort. There just needs to be a lot more studies before we're able to say anything conclusively. What we're really trying to say is, hey, the everyday comfort, like, we're trying to provide that. Lots of scientists agree. Polarization of lenses, anti-glare, all of these things that are available to us help ease those symptoms. They're sort of like a band-aid. They don't treat the symptoms. They just ease the symptoms. It could be good, and it's not bad, so I kind of leave it up to people. You know, it can improve their comfort in the now. In actuality, we need blue light to function as humans. It stimulates us and wakes us up. Blue light could present a problem at night when we need darkness to help us fall asleep because it suppresses melatonin. So filtering blue light could be useful at bedtime, which is why Apple launched night shift. Although tests of that technology and similar apps are inconclusive. Ultimately, if you're worried about computer vision syndrome or just the amount of screen time your eyes experience, take a break. Don't look at your phone, your TV, or laptop before bed. Read a book. Do a crossword. Watch the sunset. Relax. You know, you look like a person who likes gadgets. You probably like food, too. You eat food, right? Our sister site Eater has a show called the Kitchen Gadget Test Show, and you should check it out.