The screen hurt your eyes?

[robot zombie]

Too much screentime will do that eventually, no matter what you do. If your screen is hurting your eyes from looking too long, take more breaks! Go do some small task or something. Your eyes get fatigued not just from essentially staring at a magic light box for a long time, but from staring at that light source from a fixed distance and actively trying to glean input from it. Changing the distance occasionally can help, but be careful not to start leaning in. I've noticed in myself and others that as one spends more time in front of a display, they tend to inch closer as fatigue sets in more. Trying to make it easier, but actually straining the eyes more by not only bringing them closer to a direct light source, but making them work harder to focus closer and looking left/right more to see everything on the screen. Ideally you kinda wanna not do that and instead get away from the screen completely, go do something that lets your eyes focus on something with more distance from them.

Posture is more of a factor than I think people realize, too. A lot of different regions in your head, face, and neck are connected via the nervous system. Say you've been sitting wrong for a couple of hours and it is starting to affect your neck. That might also light up nerves in your face, all the way up to where your temples and eyes are. Beneath this might be some otherwise minor eye strain, which compounds with the bad posture to make you feel even worse. Now it's a full-blown headache and you're getting even more sensitive to sights and sounds. Stuff like that throws your whole equlibrium off. Trust me on this one, I have TMJ and just what's happening with my jaw can make my eyes, ears, face, head, and neck hurt. Everything up there is connected so that when one has problems, sometimes the others follow. It might not always be your eyes at all.

Our eyes aren't really meant to stare into, let alone focus on a light source for prolonged periods of time. The best way to avoid strain is to not let it get to that point in the first place. Think about it this way... how long would you be willing to stare at a light source otherwise? You'd never even think to do that. You probably avoid it without realizing.

Imagine I give you two 10lb dumbells and tell you to hold them over your head. Easy for a while, right? May even forget you're holding them up. But what if I told you to hold them up for say... 3 hours? Eventually you're going to get sore. Your eyes are no different in this case. You're putting a constant workload on them. Plenty of things you can do to help minimize the strain, but just like the best running shoes don't let you run forever, you still gotta allow for rest. Stop and catch your breath.

Now, if it's immediate discomfort, that's a different thing. May be something up with your eyes, or just something with the display that doesn't sit well with you. I have trouble with fluorescent lights and older LEDs. They make me feel like crap, I get migraines and if I look to where the lights are even in my peripheral, I see little ghost blobs move along them. Sometimes certain light sources affect people weirdly. Being tired can make it worse, too. If I haven't slept right looking at a screen always hurts a little. It's going to sound silly, but things like your diet and generally taking care of yourself are important, too. If the rest of your body isn't healthy, your eyes fare no better. The more healthy and rested you are, the less likely you'll be to experience eye strain. It's like this downward spiral of fatigue that creeps up. You're more likely to notice when it's first setting in than if you're already below a healthy baseline for the day when you first sit down.

 

[biffzinker]

Would increasing the distance between your eyes, and the monitor/tv help eye fatigue? I remember being told to take breaks by looking at a distant objects to allow for the eyes to relax.

 

[bug]

Too much screentime will do that eventually, no matter what you do. If your screen is hurting your eyes from looking too long, take more breaks! Go do some small task or something. Your eyes get fatigued not just from essentially staring at a magic light box for a long time, but from staring at that light source from a fixed distance and actively trying to glean input from it. Changing the distance occasionally can help, but be careful not to start leaning in. I've noticed in myself and others that as one spends more time in front of a display, they tend to inch closer as fatigue sets in more. Trying to make it easier, but actually straining the eyes more by not only bringing them closer to a direct light source, but making them work harder to focus closer and looking left/right more to see everything on the screen. Ideally you kinda wanna not do that and instead get away from the screen, go do something that lets your eyes focus on something with more distance from them.

Our eyes aren't really meant to stare into, let alone focus on a light source for prolonged periods of time. The best way to avoid strain is to not let it get to that point in the first place. Think about it this way... how long would you be willing to stare at light source otherwise? You'd never even think to do that. You probably avoid it without realizing.

Imagine I give you two 10lb dumbells and tell you to hold them over your head. Easy for a while, right? May even forget you're holding them up. But what if I told you to hold them up for say... 3 hours? Eventually you're going to get sore. Your eyes are no different in this case. You're putting a constant workload on them. Plenty of things you can do to help minimize the strain, but just like the best running shoes don't let you run forever, you still gotta allow for rest. Stop and catch your breath.

Now, if it's immediate discomfort, that's a different thing. May be something up with your eyes, or just something with the display that doesn't sit well with you. I have trouble with fluorescent lights and older LEDs. They make me feel like crap, I get migraines and if I look to where the lights are even in my peripheral, I see little ghost blobs move along them. Sometimes certain light sources affect people weirdly. Being tired can make it worse, too. If I haven't slept right looking at a screen. It's going to sound silly, but things like your diet and generally taking care of yourself are important, too. If the rest of your body isn't healthy, your eyes fare no better. The more healthy and rested you are, the less likely you'll be to experience eye strain. It's like this downward spiral of fatigue that creeps up. You're more likely to notice when it's first setting in than if you're already below a healthy baseline for the day when you first sit down.

I've been staring into monitors for over 30 years now. Poor CRTs at first, as you can imagine, 8+ hours a day since turning pro. I've never had a problem with exposure time. But I've learned rather early on a monitor should stay at 120cd/sqm, tops. Never, and I mean never, have I ever had to rely on blue light filters, "computer glasses" or any other rubbish.
In the days of analogue monitors, there was another problem: shimmering. That was usually caused by interference and, if it was rather small, it was hard to realize you were looking at it and it would tire your eyes. But I only saw that a few times and few people use analogue cables these days.

 

[biffzinker]

In the days of analogue monitors, there was another problem: shimmering. That was usually caused by interference and, if it was rather small, it was hard to realize you were looking at it and it would tire your eyes. But I only saw that a few times and few people use analogue cables these days.

The 60Hz refresh of CRTs always bothered my eyes after a short time. I found even a CRT with a 72Hz refresh rate made my eyes feel less tired.

 

[bug]

Would increasing the distance between your eyes, and the monitor/tv help eye fatigue? I remember being told to take breaks by looking at a distant objects to allow for the eyes to relax.

That doesn't help with fatigue, exercising long distance focus prevents the eye from "forgetting" how to do it. That's a form of long-term damage, but it's unrelated to the problem at hand.

The 60Hz refresh of CRTs always bothered my eyes after a short time. I found even a CRT with a 72Hz refresh rate made my eyes feel less tired.

I was rather young when I looked at 60Hz CRTs, I'm sure that helped me with my long Test Drive sessions. Anyway, I moved to 100Hz+ when I had the chance.

 

[robot zombie]

I've been staring into monitors for over 30 years now. Poor CRTs at first, as you can imagine, 8+ hours a day since turning pro. I've never had a problem with exposure time. But I've learned rather early on a monitor should stay at 120cd/sqm, tops. Never, and I mean never, have I ever had to rely on blue light filters, "computer glasses" or any other rubbish.
In the days of analogue monitors, there was another problem: shimmering. That was usually caused by interference and, if it was rather small, it was hard to realize you were looking at it and it would tire your eyes. But I only saw that a few times and few people use analogue cables these days.

The filters and glasses may still help people who are sensitive. Some people are much more sensitive than others. Most people, when I talk about my sensitivity to fluorescent lights, don't seem to understand it at all. I've worked in places where I seemed to be the only one seriously bothered by them. It gets to a point where I can't even concentrate because my eyes feel like they're trying to pull themselves inside of my skull.

I wish I was that lucky, to have a way where I could have that kind of screentime without major fatigue. I have not found a way to enable long periods of time looking at any screen in any environment. 8+ hours a day would mess me up good no matter what I did or didn't do.

Interesting to see high refresh come up. I've recently started running my desktop at 165hz. At first for laughs, but now because it actually is significantly easier to look at. Surprisingly not subtle.

 

[biffzinker]

Interesting to see high refresh come up. I've recently started running my desktop at 165hz. At first for laughs, but now because it actually is significantly easier to look at. Surprisingly not subtle.

Had any screen time with older CRTs? Did you ever experiment with different refresh rates?

 

[bug]

The filters and glasses may still help people who are sensitive. Some people are much more sensitive than others. Most people, when I talk about my sensitivity to fluorescent lights, don't seem to understand it at all. I've worked in places where I seemed to be the only one seriously bothered by them. It gets to a point where I can't even concentrate because my eyes feel like they're trying to pull themselves inside of my skull.

I wish I was that lucky, to have a way where I could have that kind of screentime without major fatigue. I have not found a way to enable long periods of time looking at any screen in any environment. 8+ hours a day would mess me up good no matter what I did or didn't do.

Interesting to see high refresh come up. I've recently started running my desktop at 165hz. At first for laughs, but now because it actually is significantly easier to look at. Surprisingly not subtle.

That's true, but filters, glasses and whatnot, deal with the effect. It's much easier to root out the cause, if possible. If you can't root out the cause (like you said, you can't control lighting in an office, especially if it's open space), then you look at those solutions.

The OP (who has vanished in the meantime) was complaining about TPU's theme hurting his eyes. My answer was that on a properly calibrated display, the theme is fine. Thus, I suggested that he looks at the monitor settings first. Try to address the problem at source.

 

[sowhat]

Too much screentime will do that eventually, no matter what you do. If your screen is hurting your eyes from looking too long, take more breaks! Go do some small task or something. Your eyes get fatigued not just from essentially staring at a magic light box for a long time, but from staring at that light source from a fixed distance and actively trying to glean input from it. Changing the distance occasionally can help, but be careful not to start leaning in. I've noticed in myself and others that as one spends more time in front of a display, they tend to inch closer as fatigue sets in more. Trying to make it easier, but actually straining the eyes more by not only bringing them closer to a direct light source, but making them work harder to focus closer and looking left/right more to see everything on the screen. Ideally you kinda wanna not do that and instead get away from the screen completely, go do something that lets your eyes focus on something with more distance from them.

Posture is more of a factor than I think people realize, too. A lot of different regions in your head, face, and neck are connected via the nervous system. Say you've been sitting wrong for a couple of hours and it is starting to affect your neck. That might also light up nerves in your face, all the way up to where your temples and eyes are. Beneath this might be some otherwise minor eye strain, which compounds with the bad posture to make you feel even worse. Now it's a full-blown headache and you're getting even more sensitive to sights and sounds. Stuff like that throws your whole equlibrium off. Trust me on this one, I have TMJ and just what's happening with my jaw can make my eyes, ears, face, head, and neck hurt. Everything up there is connected so that when one has problems, sometimes the others follow. It might not always be your eyes at all.

Our eyes aren't really meant to stare into, let alone focus on a light source for prolonged periods of time. The best way to avoid strain is to not let it get to that point in the first place. Think about it this way... how long would you be willing to stare at a light source otherwise? You'd never even think to do that. You probably avoid it without realizing.

Imagine I give you two 10lb dumbells and tell you to hold them over your head. Easy for a while, right? May even forget you're holding them up. But what if I told you to hold them up for say... 3 hours? Eventually you're going to get sore. Your eyes are no different in this case. You're putting a constant workload on them. Plenty of things you can do to help minimize the strain, but just like the best running shoes don't let you run forever, you still gotta allow for rest. Stop and catch your breath.

Now, if it's immediate discomfort, that's a different thing. May be something up with your eyes, or just something with the display that doesn't sit well with you. I have trouble with fluorescent lights and older LEDs. They make me feel like crap, I get migraines and if I look to where the lights are even in my peripheral, I see little ghost blobs move along them. Sometimes certain light sources affect people weirdly. Being tired can make it worse, too. If I haven't slept right looking at a screen always hurts a little. It's going to sound silly, but things like your diet and generally taking care of yourself are important, too. If the rest of your body isn't healthy, your eyes fare no better. The more healthy and rested you are, the less likely you'll be to experience eye strain. It's like this downward spiral of fatigue that creeps up. You're more likely to notice when it's first setting in than if you're already below a healthy baseline for the day when you first sit down.

You are writing a long meseages or comments. I appreciated your helps and opinions. You are correct that eyes isn't a issue for this moment. It will also affect my body,like face, neck etc.... I took a suggestion like using 1 hour computer and took a break 5 minutes. I tried to see or look the far distance items when I took a break. Eyes are great important than any things.

 

[Space Lynx]

I found my screen hurt my eyes when I was browsing the website for a long time. I also found the white background that it hurts my eyes too. Could you recommend any lamp for avoiding these issue?

Hi there,

Did you find any solution to your problem or have you considered going to an eye doctor? I am having similar problem as you. I think maybe I spent so much time looking at screen from ages 5-30 that I must have damaged something, because take for example the Ars Technica news site, light mode or dark mode, I will literally read any article for just 3 minutes, and look away, and I will be "blinking lines" in vision, its very frustrating...

Any advice or anything you have learned from your journey would be welcome. I tried Gunnar Computer glasses, it does help some, but doesn't fix the Ars Technica problem.

I try to take lots of breaks and go outside. I also try to eat more healthy food, like carrots and such. I also tried an "eye supplement" once, not sure if it helped or not really, not really I guess, but its hard to measure stuff like that.

You are writing a long meseages or comments. I appreciated your helps and opinions. You are correct that eyes isn't a issue for this moment. It will also affect my body,like face, neck etc.... I took a suggestion like using 1 hour computer and took a break 5 minutes. I tried to see or look the far distance items when I took a break. Eyes are great important than any things.

I read you are supposed to look at something far away for 15 minutes every hour you stare at the PC. so a 15 minute break every hour. This does help me some, but again does not fix my Ars Technica problem.

 

[bug]

Hi there,

Did you find any solution to your problem or have you considered going to an eye doctor? I am having similar problem as you. I think maybe I spent so much time looking at screen from ages 5-30 that I must have damaged something, because take for example the Ars Technica news site, light mode or dark mode, I will literally read any article for just 3 minutes, and look away, and I will be "blinking lines" in vision, its very frustrating...

Any advice or anything you have learned from your journey would be welcome. I tried Gunnar Computer glasses, it does help some, but doesn't fix the Ars Technica problem.

I try to take lots of breaks and go outside. I also try to eat more healthy food, like carrots and such. I also tried an "eye supplement" once, not sure if it helped or not really, not really I guess, but its hard to measure stuff like that.



I read you are supposed to look at something far away for 15 minutes every hour you stare at the PC. so a 15 minute break every hour. This does help me some, but again does not fix my Ars Technica problem.

You really don't need glasses. You just need to set up your monitor properly. And that means brightness no higher than 120nits.
Since you don't have a calibrator (if you had, your eyes wouldn't hurt), you can just place a sheet of white paper next to the monitor in broad daylight and make the monitor's white no brighter than the sheet of paper. That's usually enough to bring a monitor back into comfortable territory.

 

[Vayra86]

Exactly that. High contrast is very silly in how it works: at first, you perceive higher clarity. But you're also looking straight at a bright lamp - it gives the same effect as looking into a street light or the sun: it literally burns in your retina for a while as you recover from it. I'm sure there's a technical term for it, but its a very common phenomena. Those recovery acts are tiresome for your brain - the eyes need to adapt to a wider range of light and this causes eye strain, which in turn makes it harder to keep using a screen.

The primary influence to too much screen time is fatigue. Simple fatigue. 15 minutes of breaks won't help you one bit, that's just for training your eyes to avoid nearsightedness.

 

[Space Lynx]

You really don't need glasses. You just need to set up your monitor properly. And that means brightness no higher than 120nits.
Since you don't have a calibrator (if you had, your eyes wouldn't hurt), you can just place a sheet of white paper next to the monitor in broad daylight and make the monitor's white no brighter than the sheet of paper. That's usually enough to bring a monitor back into comfortable territory.

Interesting, the LG C1 OLED only gets to about 120 nits most of the time, and I have been considering this as my main display. I think you just sealed the deal for me, it will be good for my eye health long term. Going to buy it soon I think

 

[bug]

Interesting, the LG C1 OLED only gets to about 120 nits most of the time, and I have been considering this as my main display. I think you just sealed the deal for me, it will be good for my eye health long term. Going to buy it soon I think

Your eyes are telling you you shouldn't be relying on "gets to... most of the time". You need to learn how enforce these settings yourself. On any monitor you use.
And no, C1 does not sit around 120nits, it does double that, easily: https://www.rtings.com/tv/reviews/lg/c1-oled

 

[ARF]

The best is to:
1. Use a 3840x2160 monitor;
2. Set the brightness according to the background ambient natural illumination - the screen own brightness should not be higher than the natural surroundings;
3. Using a dark theme with white fonts is also irritating to the eyes, so maybe just use room LED luminaires instead of sitting in full darkness.

 

[bug]

The best is to:
1. Use a 3840x2160 monitor;
2. Set the brightness according to the background ambient natural illumination - the screen own brightness should not be higher than the natural surroundings;
3. Using a dark theme with white fonts is also irritating to the eyes, so maybe just use room LED luminaires instead of sitting in full darkness.

Yeah, never use a monitor in a dark room, that's also important.

 

[Athlonite]

The 60Hz refresh of CRTs always bothered my eyes after a short time. I found even a CRT with a 72Hz refresh rate made my eyes feel less tired.

I was lucky to pick up a CRT that supported 100Hz @ 1024x768 my eyes thanked me for it

as to the Ops case well there is always dark mode in browsers now most chromium based ones atleast support it not to sure about FF, mine (Vivaldi) has several settings to try that do really well for eye strain relief looks like this

easy on the eyes

 

[Chomiq]

The only time the screen hurt my eyes was when I had brightness set too high.

 

[bug]

The only time the screen hurt my eyes was when I had brightness set too high.

Exactly. But too many people set the brightness to high, usually trying to emulate the popping colors they see on stores' shelves.

The other instance where your eyes would hurt is old CRT monitors with 60Hz refresh rate. Those could be brutal.

 

[P4-630]

I was lucky to pick up a CRT that supported 100Hz @ 1024x768 my eyes thanked me for it

as to the Ops case well there is always dark mode in browsers now most chromium based ones atleast support it not to sure about FF, mine (Vivaldi) has several settings to try that do really well for eye strain relief looks like this

View attachment 252073

easy on the eyes

Well, that's a NO go for my eyes....

 

[ThrashZone]

Hi,
Frankly I prefer smaller monitors and don't really like dark mode because when shifting back off dark mode for what ever reason it's very bad on the eyes and the world is not in dark mode unless it's night time
The larger the monitor the content/ text/ icons/.. gets smaller so larger is not always better.

Odd but I do prefer to use a 1600-900 monitor and use duplicate/ scale it to what ever a t.v screen is 4k/.. what ever
I loose a little quality I think seeing my 1600-900 monitor is very old but t.v using hdmi looks very good for how much it's being duplicated/ scaled from

Everything just looks better to me and easy to read from across the room or 10-12 foot away without dpi or font increases which frankly clash with each other

1920-1080 is just so-so content is still to small going to 4k even using 125% dpi increase and adjusting text size I've found on my last setup so I'll likely pick up another 1600-900 monitor and use it instead.

 

[Mussels]

I was lucky to pick up a CRT that supported 100Hz @ 1024x768 my eyes thanked me for it

as to the Ops case well there is always dark mode in browsers now most chromium based ones atleast support it not to sure about FF, mine (Vivaldi) has several settings to try that do really well for eye strain relief looks like this

View attachment 252073

easy on the eyes

that's not easy on the eyes - even that preview is hurting mine


On my phone with it's OLED display i use white text on black just fine because it's a small display that outputs a low amount of light - you're on a 24" IPS, the experience on a 32" VA is... no fun

 

[Athlonite]

Well it's easier on my eyes but to each their own I'm not saying that how I see it is how everyone will see it. I was just saying there are ways to to change your view in your browser, If no directly by the browser then there are Extensions that will do it for you.

 

[eazen]

Dark mode + blue light filter mode of a app that does the same for long hour usage. Also you can decrease brightness. All these things will help.

 

[Mussels]

I had to help someone with migraines on this issue yesterday
10 year old LCD's with TN panels, what a surprise they're terrible on the eyes and CCFL globes above

warmer coloured LED's in, and a new high refresh rate LCD on the way with proper low blue light options on the way