How is watching tv bad for your eyes

Request an Appointment. Eye Fatigue When you focus your attention on a TV for long periods of time, you tend to blink less and your eyes get excessively dry. Preventative Care If your eyesight gets blurry or your eyes feel excessively tired while you watch TV, try moving your eyes around the room periodically and focus on other objects during commercials. Vision Checks Kids who frequently sit close to the television may actually be nearsighted and should have their vision checked. Want to Request Your Appointment Today?

Request Appointment. If you are watching TV for long periods and are concerned about your eye health, we advise you to have regular eye examinations. Consult your local Leightons Optometrist if you begin to encounter headaches, blurred vision or dry eyes. Your Optometrist may also recommend eye exercises or new glasses to benefit the health of your eyes and vision.

Find your nearest branch , book an appointment online or call our Dedicated Patient Support team on 40 20 Leightons Blog. Give it some room One of the most common mistakes we make is sitting too close to the TV screen. Consider the lighting As much as the earnest home-cinema aficionado will seek to replicate the low-lit ambiance of the local movie theatre, watching TV in the dark is to be avoided.

TV Glasses Just as some of us have reading glasses to hand, having a pair of glasses to watch television can help to improve your vision and reduce eye strain, therefore creating a more comfortable visual experience.

Room to manoeuvre Alongside screen size,the placement of the TV compared to windows can affect visual comfort. However, it's worth noting a few interesting studies on the subject. Several of these reports have illustrated a link between myopia nearsightedness and environment. First, a little bit about your eyes and myopia. The cornea and the lens are the parts of the eye that focus images. In a normal eye, these parts have a perfect shape and curve.

The curve refracts light so it makes a sharply focused image right on the retina. In a myopic eye, the cornea or lens usually curves too much, causing a refractive error. This causes the light to focus in front of the retina, making faraway objects appear blurry. If you suffer from myopia, you can see nearby objects clearly, but objects far away are out of focus.

You might have to squint to see more clearly. Myopia can be slight or severe and is easily treated with corrective glasses or contact lenses. Some people believe that environmental factors may also cause myopia -- like sitting too close to the television or computer monitor, or too much close reading. Back in the late s, a controversial study of Eskimo families ignited this debate.

Researchers studied a group of Eskimos who hadn't been introduced to formal schooling or modern civilization until around World War II. The researchers made an interesting discovery -- in this group, people aged 56 or older had zero incidence of myopia. Parents aged 30 and up had about an 8 percent incidence, but their children -- who were the first of their group to start reading -- had a 59 percent incidence of myopia. The obvious conclusion was that close focusing, like reading, caused myopia.

Some question this study, however, since the children who were tested were brought to the eye clinic because their parents already thought they had vision problems [source: Adams ]. More recently, an Australian study found that children who spend more time outside don't develop myopia as often as children who spend more time indoors. The study compared two groups of children.

Both groups spent an equal amount of time watching television, reading and playing computer games. However, one group spent only 30 minutes a day outside, while the other group spent about two hours outside. The second group had much fewer instances of myopia, leading researchers to believe that the sun may help regulate growth of the eyeball during childhood. Time spent watching TV didn't make much of a difference.

While watching TV may not cause blindness or any other permanent damage to the eyes, it can cause eyestrain. More about that on the next page. Another thing Mom always told us to do? But eating more than the recommended daily allowance won't improve your vision.

The British government didn't want the Germans to know that the reason they were shooting down so many German planes was because of their new radar system. Digital eye strain is a temporary but potentially harmful result of staring too long at a screen.

It can potentially cause:. Any kind of digital screen can potentially cause these problems, including Smartphones, tablets, computers and even the lightbulbs in our homes. In short, yes. LED screens that are popular these days emit a great deal of blue light, which can be potentially harmful to the eyes. Therefore, watching too much TV, especially late at night, can suppress melatonin production that makes us ready for sleep.