Blue-light glasses may not reduce eyestrain from screens, study says

Inevitably I had to go back since then and the next it seemed like they cut that crap as it wasn’t like that before and hasn’t been my last 2 trips. Still leaves bad taste in your mouth because you want to do the right thing but not get ripped off.

The attempt to block blue light has been with us so long (like a decade or so), the blue-light-filtering products so well commercialized, and yet the underlying claim that blue light affects sleep remains to be inconclusive at best, which makes me doubly wary of its validity.

Trying to convince some abrasive knowitall that our $15 home brand HDMI cable is going to be the bottleneck in their setup, and that it was basically orthogonal to any ‘good plated’ BS, was almost always not worth it. Eventually I learned to just let them make their own mistakes, dooming them to slink off to Amazon or whatever when they weren’t getting the resolution or frame rate they were after and eventually happened upon the CNET article that made them see the light.

The fact that there is an objective functional difference between different types of HDMI cables, whereas the jury is still out on blue blocker glasses, is pretty much irrelevant to my point. Any ‘science says…’ rhetoric is almost always parroted by people that don’t know what they’re talking about. At the end of the day, self-described ‘informed consumers’ LOVE feeling like they’ve got The Knowledge that’s going to give them a leg up on the slimy salesperson. A fair bit of the time though, the fact that the majority of these people aren’t actually all that knowledgeable means that these pearls of wisdom get corrupted over time and end up being entirely untrue. I’ve got no doubt that plenty of Hacker News regulars are the sorts of people that were incredibly hard to work with back then.

I’m not saying the blue light thing is or isn’t real, but I see this kind of argument made all the time, and I can’t tell if people just don’t understand what the placebo effect is or if everyone just thinks they’re special and the placebo effect doesn’t apply to them or what.

Additionally, I think this research/review was focused only on whether blue light filters help reduce eyestrain in the general population. So saying it had no effect here doesn't necessarily rule out the possibility that they could help in individuals with specific medical conditions that weren't controlled for or factored in here, just that in the general case they seem to have no effect.

btw. just because some people don't have this particular eye strain problem, doesn't mean it's all a giant hoax. Come on, people.

Idk if you have already, but could be a good idea to visit a professional for an evaluation.

My friend was having eye sight issues and a bit of strain, turns out it was a brain injury.

> So if the research says there isn't enough evidence it's fine, do more researches and find out exactly what happens here, but don't go around and tell how it's all made up and not helping anyone.

people aren't doing this though... Equating "not enough evidence" with "it's false" is a straw man argument. And starting with accepting the need for more research but then chastising them for expressing skepticism is bad. The emotional appeal is also bad, we aren't causing harm by voicing our skepticism.

skepticism != dismissal BTW

There are two ways these filters work.

The first and older method is to tint the lenses so that they absorb blue light. This will make the the lenses look yellow or orange. The wavelength that is normally targeted is 455nm. The more yellow or orange the lenses look the more blue light they are blocking. This tinting process works the same as it does in a normal sunglass lens (by dipping the lens in a hot water bath that has dyes dissolved in it; the dyes migrate to the porous lens material).

The second method is to put a blue reflective coating on the lenses using vacuum deposition. You can recognize these lenses because they have a strong blue reflection (not to be confused with a subtle blue reflection which can be seen in a normal anti-reflective layer). These lenses won't block as much blue light as the tinted lenses but they look nearly like normal glasses.

I suppose some manufactureres may try a hybrid approach although (both absorption and reflection). Anyway the general thing to think about is that the more "normal" the lenses appear the less blue light they will block.

I never understood their use as computer glasses because all computers and phones have low blue light modes now and these do what they say they do, and I've measured the output of screens with a spectrophotometer.

>So if the research says there isn't enough evidence it's fine, do more researches and find out exactly what happens here, but don't go around and tell how it's all made up and not helping anyone.

I think most of the backlash is against the the claims that blue light is damaging and that these filters will protect your eyes. I think in these cases the evidence has to come first.

https://www.aop.org.uk/ot/industry/high-street/2017/05/26/bo...

Obviously if someone suffers from eyestrain it's great that there are products out there that you can try (on a personal scale it doesn't matter if the solution is placebo or a not yet clearly understood therapy) but this is different from saying that everyone should have these to protect their eyes from the danger of blue light. Personally I use the night mode feature on my devices but I wouldn't bother with the glasses because to me they seem redundant.

Another thing I would like to add is that I've never met anyone technical working in the industry that actually believes these filters work and everyone considers them a marketing led exercise.

If something is causing some physical pain in your eyes, why wouldn't your solution be to get off the computer and give your eyes a rest?

> The idea behind blue-blocking lenses is to stop the light from entering the eye and throwing the circadian rhythm off; however, this has not been established with any degree of certainty in clinical studies, Miller said. [...]

Then it goes on, mentioning some research in more detail. However, the article doesn't interpret anything, or talk about why the research about lens effect provided inconsistent results, or even link to the actual research where this may be explained.

You should go see a doctor if you have that much pain or strain. Your vision likely isnt as good as you think.

there was on brand of missproduced (I think TVs) which did actually had radiation issues ;=)

through the whole bad eyesight from sitting to close to a TV things was basically nonsense

they main issue which can cause strain and long term eyesight issues is from blinking to little and in turn getting to dry eyes which could lead to microscopic damage which can accumulate over the years AFIK

This is probably why your method works => you close the eye and force production of some tears .

Through eyeballs are sensitive and anything involving "spots appear in the vision" tends to be a bad idea, so I would personally refrain from doing so. Just "strongly" closing the eyes without involving your hands tend to be good enough for facilitating some tear production.

Genuine question: why not just turn your lights on?

It seems like this is effectively making your wall brighter, which turning on your lights will have the same effect.

The one thing I miss from CRTs is being able to turn the brightness way way down at night and still have good contrast. At least for text.

The lowest brightness levels often have very poor contrast levels and will cause more eye strain as your eye will have a harder time discerning what’s on screen.

Additionally at lower brightness levels you may have higher flicker on displays due to PWM.

It makes sense to work at a brightness level that is appropriate for your environment. If your screen supports ambient light detection, enable it. Ideally you don’t want your eyes to constantly be shifting between brightness levels of your screen and the world around it.

If you do have eye strain, make sure to take regular breaks and excercise your eye by focusing on things at different depths. That has been shown to help push presbyopia to later years (but nothing really prevents it)

Also HDR colors are NOT best at maximum brightness. It’s a common misconception because humans react better to brightness. It wholly depends on your display technology , but color accuracy and depth are not linearly related to brightness and often have a falloff when you get to higher brightness unless you’re using an OLED display.

In color accurate fields, monitors aren’t set to highest brightness. Colors are calibrated against a standard Nit value which may be lower than what the monitor displays. Above and below those values, your colours are often going to be wrong compared to the intended content.

I get eyesight issues straining to tell colours apart or read text. Turning brightness and contrast up makes for much less strain.

My reading glasses have blue light blocking, though it wasn't a feature I was looking for and I buy them in packs of six for about $25.

I haven't done a rigorous test, but I feel like I get sleepier sooner with the clip-ons, than I do with just my glasses (which block only some of the higher frequency blue light).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Placebo?wprov=sfti1

Personally, I think people wait too long to get eye exams and anything you give them will make them feel better!