Many of us grew up being told that sitting too close to the television would cause blindness. This was technically false, but our parents had some kind of evidence for it. This myth went back to the 1960s when General Electric sold colored televisions that emitted harmful radiation, up to 100,000 times more than federal health officials recommended. The televisions were recalled, but the stigma persisted for decades.

Even though “TV blindness” has long since been debunked, we do know that excessive screen time can cause eye strain. Symptoms of eye strain include itchy eyes, migraine headaches, tiredness, sensitivity to light, and blurred vision.

In this article, we’re going to give you some helpful tips on protecting your eyes from digital eye strain.

Wear Migraine Glasses

For a bit of extra protection for your eyes, it’s a good idea to use eyewear protection, such as Axon Optics migraine glasses. Migraine glasses utilize lightly tinted lenses that filter out harsh blue lights from your screen without reducing your overall visibility.

If you don’t regularly wear glasses, you can purchase regular migraine sunglasses. But if you wear prescription glasses, you can also purchase fit-over migraine glasses that will comfortably be worn over your prescription glasses.

Adjust Your Screen Settings

One of the leading causes of digital eye strain is unoptimal screen settings, particularly brightness and color temperature. You may notice during the daytime that your monitor doesn’t seem overly bright or harsh, but at night time, you feel almost blinded by white screens.

It’s proven beneficial to adjust your screen brightness and color temperature to be similar to the ambient lighting around you. During the daytime, when you have sunlight filling your room, you can adjust your monitor to have a cooler temperature and brighter picture. This will also help with screen glare.

At night time, however, you should reduce screen brightness and use a warmer color temperature to reduce the amount of blue light your screen emits. Your eyes could feel almost instantly relaxed simply by turning up the warm temperature, and it’s better for your circadian rhythm as well. With a dimmed screen that has an orange tint, you might find yourself falling asleep while scrolling the web!

Use a Browser Extension

Color temperature and lowered brightness help your eyes at night, but it doesn’t completely solve the problem. The majority of internet websites use a white background with black text, which is generally terrible for your eyes, but sadly became the web design standard a long time ago.

Many popular websites, like Facebook and Youtube, now offer a Dark Mode that will change the website to a black background with white text. Not all websites offer this, however. Fortunately, you can force most of the internet to display in Dark Mode, using a browser extension like Dark Reader.

Dark Reader and similar apps simply invert the colors you specify, so it will change white backgrounds to black, black text to white, but it won’t change blue hyperlinks to yellow, for example. It makes night time browsing much friendlier on your eyes.

Try a Curved IPS or MVA Monitor

According to research performed by Harvard Medical School, participants who used curved monitors reported experiencing less eye strain than subjects who used flat monitors. Blurred vision was also 4x less common in users of curved monitors than users of flat monitors.

It’s a common misconception that monitor refresh rates (60hz, 75hz, 120hz, etc.) have an impact on eye strain, but this is unproven. Monitor refresh rate hardly matters for eye fatigue, even though some claim it does (and if someone makes such a claim, ask them for proven scientific evidence!).

What’s more important is the type of monitor and how it displays colors. A research study performed by Harvard Medical School determined that participants who used curved monitors experienced less eye strain than those using flat monitors.

The screen technology also matters. IPS or MVA monitors have the best color calibration and will generally give off less harmful blue light than a regular old LCD monitor.

Take Frequent Break Periods

This should be a no brainer, but taking frequent breaks from your screen will certainly help reduce eye strain. If you work on your computer for 8 hours a day, try a productivity technique like the Pomodoro method, which has you taking a 5-minute break after 25 minutes of working.

Not only will you increase productivity, but the frequent, short break times will also help reduce your eye fatigue.