Why I Now Wear Blue Light Blocking Glasses Everyday (& You Should Too)
For those of you that haven’t seen or read it, in September of 2018 I created a vlog and article centred around what at that time was my one month experiment with blue light blocking glasses. I had heard about them for quite some time prior to that, but finally decided to give them a shot knowing that the combination of my work and personal addiction to screen-based technology typically resulted in anywhere from 8-12 hours a day of screen time.
Before you overreact at how crazy that sounds, I’m not an outlier here. Just google average screen time in 2019 and when you factor in every device that we’re exposed to, you’ll find that most of us fall in that range.
But whether or not you a part of that “norm”, you clearly look at blue light emitting screens with some frequency given that you’re here right now.
Watch the content of this article as a video here, or continuing reading below!
At the time of that original post I was incorporating the glasses into my life daily after 8PM when at home, an amount that at this point seems laughably small to me, but still made a massive positive difference. On a physical level, they improved my sleep and stopped my eyes from going bloodshot and on a conscious level they made me far more aware of and ultimately proactive about my health.
The video version, which is now the second most watched of all-time on my YouTube channel, has and continues to encourage others to consider them, and I’ve only heard positive feedback from those that opted to pull the trigger –including some old friends that I didn’t even know ever watched my content. So I figured I’d do an update on my blue light blocking adventure, a journey that is rapidly approaching it’s 1½ year anniversary.
First things first, I still wear them. Actually, I wear them WAY more than I initially did. I pretty well wear them anytime that I am in front of a screen while at home, from morning til night. I’d wear them out in the world since I’ve had several people say they actually look really good on me but I believe that (a) those people somehow managed to only see me at that perfect angle where they aren’t a glarry mess (b) I typically spend the least amount of time in front of screens when I am out and about so I decide bombard my eyes with what they used to be overexposed to during those times.
Keep in mind that I do work from home, so technically I wear them at both home and work, but I can promise you that I would have no problem with wearing them at my place of work as well if I happened to work somewhere else.
My reasoning behind the increased wear time was that it just seemed logical. I liked what I was getting from the minimal use, so I figured why not make them play a starring role in my daily life.
Second, I found that opting to go with a very mildly yellow-tinted option was a good and important call. Not only have I seen that the vast majority of those who go more yellow or orange tend to quit because it’s more extreme and therefore invasive. Meanwhile I can barely tell the difference unless I make a conscious effort to process it. I promise your social media feeds and Netflix movies will still be just as enjoyable as they would be to your naked eye.
My third finding has been that they seem to far outperform any apps or plug-ins designed to scale back on or eliminate blue light. I won’t mention any names because that’s just mean, but I went through several apps prior to electing to buy the glasses, and tried them on even the most powerful settings, but still found myself dealing with the physical issues that the glasses have at least in my case helped to alleviate. Of course, they may have improved since so I’d still consider looking into them if the glasses aren’t your cup of tea.
My fourth and final finding is one that I’d like to repeat from my original video in 2018, and that’s the as much as blue light blocking glasses can help, they are still just a positive step on a much bigger issue. Even eye and brain health aside, our addiction to tech is out of control and cannot be overlooked. What I personally found the most helpful about the glasses was that they made me more consciously aware of my screen time by giving me that extra action to process when it was happening. And that awareness has stopped me a seemingly endless number of times from engaging in a useless newsfeed scroll or video binge that we all know the vast majority of the time offers little or no true value.
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