On that dreaded blue light
Photo: De Agostini Picture Library/De Agostini/Getty Images Welcome to Am I Dying, a column that hopes to save you from your late-night WebMD spiraling. You can email us your hypochondriac questions at [email protected].
Blue light — a particular wavelength of the LED-light given off by our phones and computer screens, which is typically otherwise white — probably isn’t great for us. That much is true. Blue light is thought to disrupt melatonin at higher levels than other wavelengths, which in turn can mess with our circadian rhythms. This can be a bad thing, though it all depends on how it’s used; blue light can be used to treat sleep dysfunctions, too.
While we may not be exposed to all that much blue light broadly, it’s true that we are exposed to more at night — which does make it riskier to stick your phone screen in your face at night. “At nighttime, our pupils are larger, because we have less ambient light. So if our pupil is larger, that’s a bigger aperture for light to come in,” says Ostrovsky.
Of more imminent, frequent concern to eye doctors than blue light-based retinal damage is ordinary, irritating dry eye. When we’re looking at our phones, we tend to focus so much that we blink less than usual, Ostrovsky explains . Decreased blinking rates lead to an evaporation of liquids from the surface of the eye, which leads to dry eye, the symptoms of which include irritation, tearing, blurry vision, and eye strain.
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