How VR Headsets Impact Your Health
The bad news comes from laser eye surgeon Dr David Allamby, a clinical director at London’s Focus clinic. He spoke on the issue in a recent Mirror article: Virtual reality headsets are set for a major explosion in popularity over this holiday season: Just yesterday, Google officially announced its own VR headset, the Daydream View, which will come in three different vaguely wool-like colors. Many VR users have complained about dry eye or eye strain from wearing headsets, a condition exacerbated by the fact that some wearers, when in a stressful situation and immersed in a 3D action environment, simply neglect to blink as often as they should be to really lubricate the eye.”
Even Traditional Computer Use Could Be a Problem
The latest polls put the average American’s time spent staring at a screen at ten hours per day. Assuming no one’s keeping up a grueling four-hour sleep period, that’s over half your waking life spent looking at a screen. And how many hours a day will put you at risk for developing computer vision syndrome, according to the American Optometric Association? Two or more continuous hours. Hmmm. This isn’t theoretical, either: Last year, the Vision Council found that “65 percent of U.S. adults reported having some kind of digital eye strain as a result of using devices for hours at a time.” The news comes from Glasses USA, which has its own solution for the problem: Whether or not the glasses do the trick, future internet users will likely have to address their screen-based dry eye problems. Image: Flickr / Andri Koolme
