is vr bad for your eyes that's probably the most common question that i've gotten since my last
video about vr so i want to go over four areas of where vr potentially could be bad for your eyes
but there could be potential benefits to the eyes let's focus in
hey howdy everybody this is Dr. Neal Guymon, Dr. EyeGuy and i want to go over the short
term potential effects as well as the long term potential effects that vr systems might have
on your eyes so let's jump right into the first topic this area relates to the digital eye stream
that you could potentially get from staring at the screens in the vr device and a lot of the symptoms
are similar in fact the same as computer vision syndrome what people get when they're looking at
computer screens or their phone screens for long periods of time they can get tired and also feel
headaches the big one is actually your eyes will dry out and that's from actually staring at the
screen because we tend to blink way way way less when we're staring at a screen same thing with
vr and that could potentially be harmful for the surface of your eyes it can cause redness
irritation burning stinging dry patches on the surface of your eye that can cause blurry vision
and so you definitely want to obey the 20 20 20 rule that i talked about in my other video one
potential long-term effect from frequent digital eye strain and not blinking from using a lot of vr
is damage to the oil glands inside of your eyelids we're noticing that people that use computer
screens and their phones for long periods of time we're finding that the oil glands of their eyelids
are actually atrophying they're shrinking down because that blinking isn't there that mechanical
blink to squeeze the oil glands and get this fresh nice healthy layer of oil onto the surface of your
eyes isn't there and this could potentially be very very harmful in the future because once
those oil glands are gone they're gone they're pretty much impossible to get back and so you
might be dealing with a chronic bad dry eye issue in the future so be sure that you obey that 20
20 20 rule for that reason that's probably the biggest reason is you don't want your oil glands
to disappear and cause a future potential problem with dry eye disease the second area has actually
been talked about a lot in certain vr forms and other videos and something called divergence
accommodation conflict so let me go over the individual terms so you know what they mean
accommodation is the name for your eyes focusing system when you actually look at your phone screen
or something up close you will accommodate or focus vergence convergence or divergence is your
eyes posture or your eyes movement to be able to look at something and make it one single image
you will converge to look at your phone screen something up close and then you'll diverge
time your eyes will converge to make that a single image a single clear image and at the same time
they'll diverge to look at something far away and your accommodation will relax so they kind of
work in harmony together the virgins accommodation conflict happens in vr devices because vr devices
usually set their focal point for distance or far away and so your accommodation will want to relax
to make the image clear but at the same time your visual system knows that there's something close
to your eyes and so they'll want to converge to make the image single a single clear image
so they have this constant conflict where they're used to working in harmony together
and all sudden you put on a device that kind of separates the two systems a little bit
i think this is actually the area where you'll hear a lot of doctors
warning against vr systems because they could potentially be harmful to the eyes because they
could be mistraining the systems of the eyes and working against that harmony that they're used to
but the nice thing about the eyes is that they are elastic so they can snap back so as long as
you're taking breaks every 20 30 minutes and your eyes can snap back into that harmonious
system that they're used to also in the future they are working on better lenses for vr devices
that can be multi or varied focal distances and being able to move the lenses a little bit so
you can actually be able to use that harmony of the accommodation and the vergence together so i
don't see this potentially being a bigger problem in the future i think they are working on solving
this issue currently the third area relates to the actual blue light that's coming from the
device and i did a whole video about blue light coming from the oculus quest 2 and if it was bad
for your eyes you can check out that video right there also in the description below but that video
also pertains to other vr devices as well the main gist is the blue light could potentially
be contributing to digital eye strain the studies are mixed on that some say no some say yes the one
thing the blue light can do is that it can affect your sleep cycle so if you are playing the device
closer to bedtime then you could potentially be awake all night because that blue light
affected your sleep cycle so try and use the blue light filter as much as you can trying to avoid
playing vr towards bedtime which is really difficult to do but if you do those things then
you're doing what you can do to try and keep your eyes safe from the blue light the fourth area is
a question that i get all of the time and that's if vr is causing our vision to get worse meaning
is it causing us to get more astigmatism is it causing us to become nearsighted or farsighted
and that's also studied a lot with computer use and phone use and tablet use because more and more
people on this planet are becoming nearsighted meaning their distance vision is becoming blurry
and so the worry and a lot of studies are trying to find out if it's because of our
phone use and our tablet use pretty much our world is really close to us so are we adapting to this
close-up world now here's where one benefit comes out with the vr devices a lot of times vr is set
for distance meaning that we're relaxing our accommodation and focusing far away a lot of
times our accommodation can be relaxed when we're looking in the vr device so that's one benefit
that the vr has over looking at your phone screens or your tablets or even the computer screens
is that you get to relax and look far away you don't even have to use your accommodation
to try and focus up close but bottom line if you are using a vr device and you obey the 20 20 20
rule you take breaks you blink you move your eyes around maybe you use eye drops you're using the
blue light filter you're being smart about your eyes you're taking care of your eyes if you feel
a headache if you feel an eye strain take a break let your eyes bounce back to what they usually do
bounce back into that harmonious level and i think your eyes will last a long time and you can avoid
a lot of those potential long-term side effects of using a vr device a couple more benefits that
i want to add at the end of the video is a lot of vr devices or something similar are being used for
people that have already damaged vision meaning they have very very low vision maybe due to an
eye disease or trauma or something like that they can actually use a vr device to magnify
images maybe watch tv to make them look really really big and actually is bringing back some
of their functional vision and so that's one benefit that i'm actually really excited about
the potential the future potential of helping these people that have low vision another benefit
they actually use vr devices in kids that have a lazy eye or one eye that is not seeing as well as
the other eye they'll have them play a vr game in a vr device and they're able to change the lenses
or the focal points of the lenses maybe make one eye blurry so they can actually train the brain
to use that lazy eye and maybe strengthen that eye and so that's also another exciting
part of vr and where it can actually be beneficial and actually help people with eye problems if
you have any questions about vr and eyes make sure that you leave it down in the comments i
actually try my best to try and answer all the questions that i get on these videos make sure
that you check out my other videos as well i'll leave those in the description about astigmatism
my other vr and i videos the blue light video so you can have that reference to now i plan
on doing a part two to this video and that's if vr is bad for kids eyes so make sure that
you're subscribed for that when i release that video i'm Dr. Neal Guymon, Dr. EyeGuy, focusing
on you and your eyes check out my other videos right there and i'll see you in the next video