Staying Safe with Your Smartphone

Let's face the facts - we're addicted to smartphones. In truth, these devices are wonderful, because they allow us to stay connected no matter where we are. Nevertheless a lot of people hold their phones and tablets very close to their eyes. If you do a lot of reading off small screens, it can be really tough on your eyes.

Because we all hold smart phones so close, our eyes end up working overtime, just to focus on text and images. Eventually, research shows this may cause problems with focus and vision, especially if you already wear glasses. If you already wear glasses, holding a device too close to your face will make it a real challenge for your eyes to correct for distance. Eventually, these challenges can result in eyestrain and headaches.

There are other symptoms that can be caused by holding your device too close to your eyes, including dry eyes or blurry vision, because excessive screen time lessens your blink rate.

In order to lessen these symptoms resulting from the use of our phones, it is recommended to set the text to be much bigger and try to keep your smart phone as far away from your eyes as you can. It's also recommended to work towards using your phone in shorter increments, and giving your eyes lots of rests. We all need technology, but it's important to be smart about it, in order to protect our vision.