Three Tools To Reduce Eye Strain From Smartphone Displays

What is the first thing you do after waking up in the morning? Unless you possess truly unique morning habits, you most probably look at your phone. That may also be the last thing you do before going to bed. Whether it’s connecting the dots on your favourite video game or catching up on what Kim Kardashian wore to the Grammy’s – the verdict is in: we so spend a lot of time staring at our smartphone screen and this is not about to change.

What can change is us taking the extra care to not let our smartphone obsession put a big strain on our eyes –if for no other reason than to see that screen even clearer.

Here are a few tools that will offer your busy eyes some much-needed rest without pushing you to limit the time you spend on your phone or tablet.

Even though, we do encourage you to take regular breaks from “computing” and let your eyes get a glimpse of the outside scenery. A simple set of eye relaxing exercises can also come in handy.

Blue Filter For Eye Care

A number of recent studies have shown that LCD displays may have an additional negative effect on our system. Our phones and other portable devices display light in a signature “blue hue” that is said to take a toll in our circadian rhytms.

Blue Filter For Eye Care adjusts your screen colour to reduce the amount of blue light, letting your eyes relax and significantly reducing the pressure on them. This is especially useful if you like to do some reading on your phone before bedtime.

Twilight

If you are looking for an app that is sleep-specific – go for Twilight. And no, this has nothing to do with the controversially-successful vampire movie.

Twilight is an application that adapts your phone screen to the time of day and regulated the amount of blue light accordingly.

According to a number of studies, as well as the app developers’ website, our eyes are particularly sensitive to a band of blue light because of a photoreceptor in your eyes, called Melanopsin. This same photoreceptor is the reason we may find it hard to fall asleep after reading or playing games in our smartphone or tablet. Twilight softens the blue light with a red filter, which makes the light emitted by the screen much softer on your eyes and adjusts the timing according to your local sunset and sunrise times.

Easy Eyes Free

Easy Eyes sort of incorporates a few features from the applications above and offers you extensive control of your phone display. The main idea behind the application, as with the two others, is to lower the strain for your eyes and make sure you can have a more relaxing viewing experience.

As with previous applications, Easy Eyes Free allows you to use a warmer hue than a traditional blue light, softening the screen for your eyes and you can schedule to enable this feature at particular times during the day.

Additionally, it lets you tweak you screen settings for lower brightness level. That is, you will be able to set your brightness at a lower level than the default minimum setting on your smartphone. When the light source, that is brightness, becomes lower, your body can produce more melatonin – and that, in turn, will allow for a faster and better sleep. So instead of reaching for sleeping pills, you may use the light to your benefit and fall asleep naturally.