Digital eye strain aside, we cannot deny the obvious, technology has made our lives better on too many levels. How technology revolutionised our communication from the era of communicating through the one handset landline often in the dining room where every family member would hear part of your conversation to a personal smartphone remains the greatest advantage of technology.

To a factory or production line worker who was working in a dangerous environment, you cannot convince them that a robotic machine taking their job is a bad thing. I don’t think anyone will have much success in trying to convince an old woman deep in an African village who occasionally sees her American based grandchildren on a video call that a network booster stationed next to her home might cause health problems.

I would like to speculate and say it is difficult to explain to your generation Z child how a music jukebox operated without looking like someone trying to explain the benefits of eating pork to a person who abstains from eating it for religious reasons. The truth of the matter is, technology has made our lives so easy and enjoyable it is difficult to imagine life before the internet.

However, technology has its drawbacks too, chief among them, it has brought eye strains because of more screen exposure otherwise known as digital eye strains that were minimal in the past decade or two. We have also been bombarded with too much information because of technology one has to be cautious when consuming information on the internet. That and many other drawbacks we cant list today are just a tip of how technology is interfering with the life we are living.

Over the past few years, people have increased their screen time significantly according to the University Of Leeds’s Rafe Clayton and Carmen Clayton’s report on UK Screen Use 2022, 50% of adults in the Uk spend a whopping 11 hours a day looking at different screens. Over time, this is known to cause eye strains of many forms which include but are not limited to blurry vision, dry eyes, double vision, eye discomfort, and eye fatigue just to mention a few.

In case you are concerned about your screen time exposure and you either want to stay ahead of a looming eye strain or like the rest of us, you are already suffering from one form of digital eye strain, follow these 5 tips to combat the problem.

1. Whenever possible ensure there is ambient light wherever you are going through your phone, laptop or watching TV. Avoid using these gadgets in the dark as this strains the eyes.
2. Activate automatic brightness on your smartphone so that it automatically adjusts to the ambient light around you.
3. Avoid spending too much time in front of your gadgets. Curate your schedule in such a way that you will only use them when necessary
4. Make use of colour filters, and anti-glare apps and tools available for your gadgets.
5. if possible, take an occasional 30 minutes break from your gadget to rest your eyes before you resume using it.