The average person blinks once every four or five seconds. Computer users may blink every 10 seconds or less.
It’s hard for me to believe I didn’t have my first cell phone until college. My family did have a DOS-based computer when I was in high school, but it was only used for word processing and the occasional game of Pete Rose baseball. Now I spend at least five hours every day looking at a smartphone or a computer screen, and that’s an average day for most of my patients.The question of interest is how all this computer use is affecting us. For simplicity’s sake, I’ll examine the effects in three categories: How computer use affects us on a daily basis, how it affects our optical prescription over time and what the long-term effects of computer use will be on our eyesight.
Patients often complain of eyestrain or fatigue from computer use. The muscles inside your eyes change shape to allow focusing at different distances. These muscles can be very flexible but aren’t designed to stay in the same position for long periods of time. When you look at a computer screen for hours on end, it’s like holding a paper clip in the air with your hand. It’s easy to lift the clip, but holding your arm in place for an hour would be almost impossible. If you don’t give your eyes a break, you’re putting the same kind of strain on the muscles inside your eyes.
Dry eye is also a common problem. The average person blinks once every four or five seconds. Computer users may blink every 10 seconds or more. The result is significantly more tear film evaporation. Dry eye can cause irritation but may also create inconsistent vision. A drop of artificial tears at the beginning of the workday and after lunch is an easy way to prevent it, since it helps maintain the integrity of the tear film and promotes clearer vision and comfortable eyes.
Many patients also struggle with neck problems and headaches due to the ergonomic challenges of their workstation. Tilting your chin up to read the computer screen through a bifocal may work, but it won’t be a comfortable long-term solution. It’s important that your prescription and the positioning of your computer screen are coordinated.
The good news about using computers is that it doesn’t significantly change your prescription. Most patients will experience an increase in eyestrain with computer use, but it doesn’t accelerate the aging process of your eyes or induce any significant amount of nearsightedness. Your prescription needs will likely change over time, but those changes would occur even without computer use.
Recent research suggests that the long-term concern with computer use may be the amount of blue light exposure. Prolonged exposure to blue light has been connected to the development of cataracts and macular degeneration.
Fortunately, there are ways to deal with all of the eye problems that computer use can cause. It’s important to look around every 20 or 30 minutes when you’re at your computer, to give your eyes a chance to relax.
There are many optical options available to assist patients with computer use. Many people have some amount of farsightedness or astigmatism that can be fixed with correction via glasses, contacts or laser surgery. For mature adults, reading changes may make computer use more complicated but there are special lenses that correct for reading and computer use simultaneously. Additionally, manufacturers have started producing coatings that block blue light from getting to your eye.
In the modern world, it’s likely that our use of computers and personal data devices will only increase. It’s critical to protect your eyes and ease the strain of regular computer use. If you use a computer, see your eye doctor to talk about your vision needs.
Dr. Ricks is a Bay Area native and a graduate of UC Berkeley optometry. He spends his free time rooting for the Warriors and Giants and hiking with his girlfriend and her dog, Flicky. He’s been an associate doctor at Sonoma Eyeworks for the last five years.
