Anti-Blue Light Glasses: Protector or Sham?

by admin · January 24, 2023

Hello and good morning, NK. Yeah, it’s Favour calling; my other number got blocked. How are you doing today? Oh, it is good to hear that you are fine. I’m calling for a quick favor. Could you please send the Instagram handle of the vendor you bought your glasses from? That’s right, the anti-blue light frame, Oh, thank you; I just got the beep.

This conversation and many others like it have occurred among many people looking for ways to protect their eyesight, particularly those who use computers daily.

So over the past few years, the demand for blue light-blocking frames has seen a rapid increase. Research shows that there was an 812% increase in searches over the past 12 months for “blue light glasses” as of May 2020.

Anti-blue light eyewear often referred to as “screen glasses” or “blue light filtering glasses,” is a type of eyewear with lenses that are made to reduce the amount of damaging blue light that reaches your eyes, which is typically created by digital gadgets.

Almost every techie owns an anti-blue-light frame. Some even own more than one, in different frame shapes and sizes, and some go as far as getting one for a formal look and another for a less formal look. In fact, as of today, eight out of every ten techies you know own an anti-blue light frame.

Some techies bought these glasses from their other techie friends, who had a quick awakening about the demand for a particular commodity within the tech ecosystem and used this as an avenue to make side money. Who says you can’t be a techie and an online vendor? No one!

I don’t think this article would be complete if I forgot to state for a fact that some techies even bought out of peer pressure. Last week, Emeka walked into his office and realized that Dave and Joy both had new anti-blue light frames, and they were speaking enthusiastically about how this would help protect their eyes from the eye issues associated with using a computer all day long. Today, Emeka, not wanting to be left out of the trend, just got himself a blue light-blocking frame without any research about blue light-blocking frames.

Let’s not forget the category of people who have turned themselves into self-acclaimed opticians. Two weeks ago, Beauty requested a day off work to enable her to visit an optician because she had observed that after a few hours of working on her laptop, she had developed a headache and her eyes got teary. Richard, upon hearing this, didn’t waste any time in advising her to avoid going to the optician to waste her money and instead get an anti-blue light frame because he was sure her eye issues were from the blue light rays from working on her laptop.

Is this the case, though? Do blue light rays from our digital devices bring about eye issues, and will the use of anti-blue light frames prevent or stop this from happening?

So I think before we get to the part where we find out if blue light-blocking frames work to prevent eye issues, we should first understand what they are.

Blue light-blocking glasses have specially crafted lenses that are said to block or filter out blue light. Blue light is all around us and is found naturally in sunlight and artificially in fluorescent lights and digital screens.

However, it is important to note that most eye issues that are caused by digital screens aren’t due to blue light. Yes, you read right!

The eye issues most people experience from digital screens usually fall under a term called Computer Vision Syndrome (CVS), also known as digital eye strain, which happens if you spend a long time concentrating and looking at a screen, then your eyes become fatigued. Some symptoms include watery eyes, headache, itchy eyes, etc.

The bottom line is that, likely, the irritation you are experiencing from a long day of working on your computer screen is a symptom of CVS. The only reason why blue light can be associated with CVS is that it negatively affects your sleep cycle, which in the long run contributes to CVS.

According to several studies, blue-light glasses may:

Enhance visual performance

Reduce eye strain,

However, there is no scientific evidence that wearing blue light-blocking glasses automatically takes care of your eye health 100%, and while blue light glasses are ineffective at preventing CVS, there is no harm in wearing them for eye support.

You can wear them all day.