When you scroll through the screen late at night, what are your eyes experiencing?

On this sleepless night, have you habitually turned off the bedroom lights, curled up in bed, and used your phone screen as your only light source? Although this scene is familiar to many people, do you know that this seemingly harmless habit is quietly causing a significant impact on your eyes?

1️⃣The invisible driving force behind vision loss

After turning off the lights, the surrounding environment is pitch black, and the blue light from the mobile phone screen is particularly glaring. Long-term exposure to this high-contrast environment requires the eyes to constantly adjust the focus, which can easily lead to visual fatigue and may accelerate the development of myopia in the long run.

2️⃣The blue light demon that interferes with sleep

Blue light not only damages retinal cells, but also inhibits the secretion of melatonin, a key hormone that helps us fall asleep. Therefore, turning off the lights and playing with your phone before going to bed may make you toss and turn, making it difficult to fall asleep, and affecting your mental state and work efficiency the next day.

3️⃣Causes of dry eyes

When staring at the screen, we tend to blink less unconsciously, which causes the moisture on the surface of the eyeball to decrease, resulting in uncomfortable symptoms such as dryness and foreign body sensation. In severe cases, it may also induce dry eye syndrome.

4️⃣Increase the risk of eye inflammation

Using electronic devices in a dark environment for a long time may also aggravate the occurrence of eye inflammation, such as conjunctivitis, keratitis, etc., posing a greater threat to eye health.

So, how can we enjoy the tranquility of the night while protecting our eyes?

Turn on night mode : Many mobile phones and apps provide night mode or eye protection mode, which can effectively reduce blue light damage.

Adjust screen brightness : Keep the screen brightness consistent with the ambient light to avoid being too bright or too dark.

Maintain an appropriate distance : Keep your eyes at least 30 cm away from the phone screen to reduce eye strain.

Take regular breaks : Follow the "20-20-20" principle, which means that for every 20 minutes of using your eyes, look 20 feet (about 6 meters) into the distance for 20 seconds to help your eyes relax.

Consider using blue light glasses : Special blue light protection glasses can reduce the damage of blue light to the eyes to a certain extent.

Take care of your eyes, start now! Don't let a moment of indulgence turn into regret in the future. Let's work together to protect this precious "window to the soul".

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About Dr. Jingcai: The creators of Dr. Jingcai's popular science content all have a professional background in ophthalmology, a master's degree or above, and are former ophthalmologists. For some popular science content with a higher degree of professionalism, we will also invite working ophthalmologists and optometry experts to review and check it, striving to be responsible for the accuracy of the content and avoid misleading readers.