Hyderabad woman goes temporarily blind due to ‘wrong smartphone usage’: 8 simple tips to protect your eyes

 A Hyderabad-based neurologist Dr Sudhir Kumar at Apollo Hospitals recently shared a series of tweets, sharing how a 30-year-old woman lost her vision due to her smartphone. He also listed a few measures that one must take when it comes to smartphone usage. TOI Tech spoke to a few eye doctors in Delhi-NCR for their views on the incident. While the general view is that there is no substantiated study on smartphones being dangerous to the human eye. But yes, their prolonged usage and under certain conditions can be harmful to eyes. Here are 8 simple tips that smartphone users should follow to protect their eyes.

Use Dark mode

Use Dark Mode. Dark mode is also known as dark theme. The setting is available on almost all smartphone models now. Switching your device to Dark mode means that it will display white text on a dark background. Dark mode is used to reduce blue light exposure. This helps with digital eye strain that may come with extended screen time Dark mode can be accessed via the phone's display settings. It can be switched On and Off to your preferences.

Adjust screen’s Brightness settings

Too high as well as two low brightness and contrast are both harmful to the eyes. You can adjust these in the settings of your device. The best is to go by the built-in brightness and contrast settings in your phone.

Don’t forget to blink

Blink, blink and blink. Blinking regularly (for more than a second) keeps your eyes moist and reduces strain. Make sure you blink 10 times to 20 times every half an hour while using your phone. Blinking also helps refocus your eyes.

Use Screen Time on iPhones and Digital WellBeing feature on Android devices

Over the years, both iPhones and Android phones come with settings that help to reduce your screen time on the device. With Screen Time on iPhones, users can manage their app use, schedule time away from the device, and block apps/notifications for periods when you want time away from your devices. Similarly in Android phones, there's Digital WellBeing feature that offers almost all similar features. This includes providing access to helpful tools like app limit timers and a “wind down” or "bedtime" mode to help users focus on going to sleep. Users can change or turn off any of these settings at any time on both the devices.

Use Night Shift on iPhones and Night Light on Android Phones

Night Shift on iPhones and Night Light feature on Android phones can automatically adjust the colours of your display to the warmer end of the spectrum — making the display easier on the eyes.

Increase text size on your smartphone

Make sure that the text size on your smartphone screen is big. Small text size outs more strain on eyes. You can easily change the text size by going to settings. All smartphones allow you to change contrast, brightness, and text settings. Increase text size to make reading text messages easier.

Keep your smartphone’s screen clean

It’s not difficult for our smartphone’s screen to get dirty. As our hands are not exactly always very clean when we use them, nor are the places we keep them. So it is important to clean our phone not only for hygienic reasons but also because a dirty screen adds additional strain on our eyes. Take a soft cloth and clean your screen regularly, you don’t need water or a detergent for this. A simple micro-fiber cloth will do.

Follow the 20/20/20 Rule

There is the so-called 20/20/20 rule for smartphones. This means that every 20 minutes you need to look at something at least 20 feet away for at least 20 seconds. This will go a long way to protecting your eyes.