Protect your eyes when using a Smart Phone.
By Celeste McLaughlin, Ergonomics Manager
Solutions Northwest, Inc. – Arcata, California
What is Digital Eyestrain?
Whether it is the smart phone’s tiny screen, the tiny images and text, or the screen’s light, it is important to be cautious and aware of the risks of digital eyestrain.
According to Mary Meeker’s Internet Trends report: “the average American (aged 16-44) spends 444 minutes or 7.4 hours staring at screens every day. That’s 147 minutes of television, 103 minutes on a computer, 151 minutes with smartphones, and 43 minutes on a tablet.”
What are the symptoms?
Too much screen time can cause many eye-related symptoms such as discomfort, eyestrain, blurred vision, dry eyes, headache, fatigue, difficulty focusing, and shoulder and neck pain.
5 Ergonomics Tips to Reduce Your Risk:
- Most smartphones have a feature to make letters on the screen bigger. The most common way to do this is starting with your fingers in a pinched position touching the screen and pulling your fingers apart until the letters are big enough. The letters should be at least as large as the green serial numbers on the front of a dollar bill.
- Go into the phone settings menu and adjust the screen brightness level to about half. Most phones come with a factory brightness setting which is equivalent to looking at a light bulb.
- When choosing a color scheme, the ones which are easiest on the eyes are a white background with black text or a black background with green text.
- Use the phone in a position where there is not glare on the screen, reduce the screen glare to reduce eye strain.
- Try some Eye Exercises that we have featured in a previous Ergonomics Blog.
For more guidance on all things Ergonomics, visit SolutionsNW.com or Contact Us for more information.
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