Debunked Fact Medicine Biology Technology

Blue Light Glasses Stop Screens Damaging Your Eyes

The screens aren't damaging your eyes; the glasses aren't doing anything

Screens give off blue light, blue light damages your retina, blue light keeps you awake, blue light is the reason your eyes hurt at the end of the workday. The fix is blue-light-blocking glasses: cheap on Specsavers, cheaper on Temu, mandatory if you work on a laptop. Your kid's optometrist will sell them to you for $90 a pair. There are influencers who do nothing else.

A 2023 Cochrane Review of 17 randomised trials and 619 participants found no evidence that blue-light-filtering glasses reduce eyestrain, no evidence they improve sleep, and no evidence they protect the retina. Screens emit a small fraction of the blue light you'd get from being outside on a cloudy day. The 'eyestrain' you feel is from not blinking enough (you blink about 60 percent less when reading a screen) and from sustained near-focus work, neither of which a tinted lens fixes. The 'screens are damaging your retina' line was extrapolated from animal studies using laser-grade blue light at intensities thousands of times higher than any screen. The American Academy of Ophthalmology has formally said the glasses don't help. The optometrists kept selling them anyway because the margin is excellent. Take a break, blink, look out a window for twenty seconds every twenty minutes. That's the whole intervention.

Believed 2015–2025
Year Revised 2023
Why Changed New Evidence
Confidence Fully Debunked
Region Worldwide

Reception

8/10
8/10

Sources

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