People play video games as a means of escape and entertainment. With the dawn of the Internet, online gaming has also provided avenues for gamers to interact and socialize with each other without being in the same place.
However, despite the benefits of gaming, prolonged use of digital screens for gaming can be detrimental to aspects of your health in the long run. Digital eye strain has recently become a common lifestyle problem, impacting 22.3% to 39.8% of the community. This includes a group of eye and vision symptoms, including eye discomfort and fatigue, dry eye, blurry vision, and headaches. Similarly, a Harvard study showed that prolonged exposure to artificial light, like digital screens, at night can result in insomnia due to suppression of melatonin release.
Still, with so many upcoming games coming out in the near future, many gamers remain blissfully unaware of the health risks associated with prolonged gaming. Titles like the new Tekken 8 from Namco and a long-awaited remake of Silent Hill 2 come to mind, but it’s important to take good care of your general and vision health to enjoy and grind these new titles. Below, we’ll be sharing some tips for how to reduce eye strain when gaming:
Wearing eyeglasses
Nowadays, visual impairment has become especially common among gamers and people who spend long periods staring at a digital screen. As such, wearing good-quality eyeglasses can provide much-needed vision correction and reduce the likelihood of developing eye fatigue or eye strain. Brands like Ray-Ban, for example, offer various eyeglass frames in different shapes and designs, from the thin-framed Round Metal Optics to the Clubmaster and Wayfarer. For gamers, in particular, it can help to look for thin or flat eyeglass arms that won’t hurt your head or ears when worn with headphones for long periods.
You can also find specially made computer glasses that have blue-light-filtering lenses to help eliminate exposure to blue light from your digital screens. Some gamers may not like wearing blue light glasses, as they tend to have a yellowish tint to help reduce blue light. However, brands like GUNNAR have modernized this approach by introducing new lens technologies like Clear Pro, which offers perfect color rendition and won’t distort your color perception.
Adjusting viewing distance
Aside from wearing glasses, it’s also important to adjust your gaming habits to preserve eye and vision health. For example, viewing distance depends on the monitor or television display you use when playing a game. For many, gaming on a 4K monitor has become natural and common, thanks to the availability of hardware that supports higher graphics and resolutions. However, many 4K monitors and televisions come in larger sizes, ranging from 27- to 30- and even 40-inch displays. As such, these should be viewed from a fair distance instead of up close.
Gamers tend to lean in to see clearer or stay focused during intense moments and boss fights. Keeping a good distance between you and your gaming screen is also crucial for maintaining good posture. Leaning in too close to your monitor or television can cause back pains and muscle strains when done over hours, which can cause more severe problems in the long run.
Avoid gaming in the dark
Finally, adjusting your lighting when gaming is essential for maintaining good eye health for long-time gamers. Many gamers tend to spend long hours in front of a bright screen while gaming in dark or dimly lit rooms. This can cause excess glare to your eyes and cause blurry vision, dizziness, or even headaches when experienced for too long.
You can buy monitor light bars or invest in some backlights for your monitor to help balance out the bright glare and lights coming from your monitor. This can help increase the contrast between objects and backgrounds on your screen, which will reduce the need for you to strain or squint when trying to see or aim in games.