Can blue light from smartphones cause blindness?

If you are like most people, you use your phone for long hours at night. But did you know that this is a dangerous habit? Just how dangerous are we talking? Well, all digital devices emit High Energy Visible (HEV) blue light, the overexposure to which has been linked to the disruption of sleep cycle and even macular degeneration!

Yes, using your smartphone at night can blind you!

The bad news is that our eyes are not fully equipped to filter the HEV blue light that’s emitted from digital devices. That’s why an overexposure to it can result in a damaged retina.

Dangerous High Energy Visible blue light from smartphones turns specific molecules in your eyes into “cell killers,” resulting in macular degeneration. Macular degeneration is an incurable eye disease that usually increases by age, and can eventually lead to blindness by killing the photoreceptor cells in your eye. Both rods and cones photoreceptor cells in the retina are responsible for sensing light. The photoreceptor is useless without retina. This means that if you want to see without any interruption, your eyes need a continuous supply of retinal molecules.

The retinal molecule can detect light and trigger signaling to the brain. But when you are overexposed to blue light from smartphones, especially at night before bedtime, it hits your retina which can poison the photoreceptor cells. As a result, this may affect your vision and even cause blindness. So, you need to stop it before blue light from smartphones affects your eyes.

How to protect your eyes?

When it comes to protecting your eyes from the potential damage of blue light emitted from smartphones, blue light blocking glasses can come in handy. These glasses are designed to prevent both high-energy wavelengths (blue light and UV rays) from penetrating your eyes when you use digital devices for long hours.

Besides getting yourself a pair of high-quality blue light glasses, you can try the following tips to reduce the overexposure to blue light when using your smartphone:

• Put your smartphones down more often – It may be possible that you use your phone more often than you need to. So, make sure you try to limit your phone usage, thereby avoiding the adverse effects of blue light.
• Stop using your phone at least three hours before going to bed – Exposure to blue light from digital screens can disrupt your sleep cycles and result in constant fatigue the next day. So, if you want to get better sleep at night and wake up feeling fresh, put the phone away before bedtime.
• Follow the 20-20-20 rule – Take frequent breaks to prevent overexposure to blue light. This can help you avoid eye strain related to focusing on a screen. Apart from this, if you experience migraine symptoms, you can use migraine glasses to treat them effectively.
• Use blue light filtering apps – There are mobile apps available that can effectively block a large amount of blue light from digital devices.

While you can use the tips mentioned above to reduce the overexposure to blue light from smartphones, using blue light blocking glasses is still the best way to protect your eyes while using smartphones.