so let's face it we all spend way too much time staring at our smartphones between work
email text messaging social media and playing app games we are looking at our phones all day long
with new statistics showing that worldwide we're spending over 6 and 1 half hours a day staring
at our screens that means the average person will stare at their screen for over 3 months out of a
given Year and that definitely contributes to I problems with one study showing an incidence of
digital eye strain at over 78% but now this just came out this is the TCL 40 next paper
it happens to be the first smartphone with a screen specifically designed to reduce digital
eye strain and to be more eye healthy but what is so different about it and can screen technology
like this really help with the eyes so today we're going to examine how smartphones affect
our eyes through the lens of what this technology brings to the table and hopefully that'll help us
better understand how this technology could help and give us an idea of how smartphones and other
digital screens will change going into the future so shout out to TCL for sponsoring this video and
giving us an opportunity to have a deeper look at this new technology and how smartphones affect the
eyes Okay so if you first start to think about how smartphones could affect the eyes most of us will
undoubtedly think of the dreaded blue light but while blue light does play an important role in
this puzzle there are other influencing factors now the first way that phone screens affect our
eyes and that I think people see but don't realize is how much glare comes off of the screen by glare
this means any reflected light bouncing off of the screen itself and hitting you in the eyes
but glare also includes directionality or the scattering of light coming through through the
smartphone screen itself and this glare or level of light scatter can dramatically reduce contrast
making viewing of the screen much more difficult often making us try to squint our eyes or try to
even work harder to view the screen accurately and this glare is known to be one of the major
factors contributing to digital eye strain now looking at this new phone from TCL you can easily
tell a huge difference in glare versus other screens it turns out that they use some sort
of specialized chemical etching that creates a nano level of roughness and that produces kind
of a paperlike matte effect of texture and because of that it helps scatter the internal light source
of what you're viewing on the screen making it appear softer while simultaneously diffusing any
reflected light from an external light source drastically reducing Reflections by a whopping
90% And this in turn creates a softer visual experience and makes it easier to view the
screen even in outdoor environments I've seen a few other like mat screen Technologies and
things like TVs and other computer monitors but I've never seen it in a smartphone before but
I think they are honestly on to something here interestingly and I'll kind of just throw this
in here even though it's off of the discussion of how screens affect the eyes just this matte feel
tactile feeling of the screen is is honestly really cool ites do feel like paper okay now
Beyond just glare there are different types of phone screens and this phone has what's called
Next paper mode which comes in two options both color paper and ink paper which by using
a combination of both hardware and software the display turns into an e-reader and this feature
is honestly something that makes me pretty happy because if you've ever used an e-reader before
it feels very different to your eyes an e-reader just doesn't cause the same level of eye strain
as other types of screens do and over the last few weeks while I've been testing it out I've
mainly kept it in color paper mode which I do find is way more comfortable it's less harsh on
my eyes the ink paper mode basically just turns it into a black and white mode which I think will
probably be best if you are doing a lot of book reading articles and checking emails that sort
of thing either way I think it's really cool how you can just turn it into this mode and basically
do anything on your phone whether it be checking emails playing games watching videos even and just
everything looks and feels like an e-reader okay now let's dive into this whole blue light issue
this is something that I get a lot of questions about from patients in the clinic and something
I've kind of touched on in a few other videos if you haven't heard much of the light that is
emitted from our digital screens comes from the blue wavelength light Zone and this is concerning
because blue light has a shorter wavelength but it has a much higher energy and contrary to the
popular belief there's in fact two different types of blue light there is good blue light
and there is bad blue light this definition comes from the international Commission on nonionizing
radiation protection which defines the more concerning and high energy blue light being
between 415 and 450 5 NM of light with the more beneficial blue light ranging from 460 to 500 NM
of light the more beneficial blue light is known to affect more of our neurological functions most
notably that of our sleep cycles and this occurs because of a specialized cell within the back of
the eye called an intrinsically photosensitive retinal ganglion cell and that cell is highly
sensitive to wavelengths of blue light which then sends nonvisual information from the eye through
the optic nerve to other parts of your brain which is known to play an influence on both
your alertness as well as your sleep cycles with some studies showing that blue light can influence
our ability to pay attention as well as be used in light based treatments for things like sad or
seasonal affective disorder now the major concerns with the bad blue light is that it can potentially
damage retinal cells in the back of the eye mainly when it comes from a high energy source such as
the sun a laser or even from certain powerful LED lights as they've been able to show this in animal
studies however and thankfully they've been able to calculate and show that the amount of energy
of blue light emitted from our digital screens is not enough to be a direct biohazard to the retina
in the back of the eye that's why we don't burn holes in the back of our eye just from staring at
your screen like we do when we stare at the Sun but in addition to all of this this bad
blue light is also known to be more neurologically stimulating which can trigger migraines for some
people and this type of blue light is known to focus differently inside of the eye and
Scatter more leading to more problems with visual glare and Starbursts which make it not only more
difficult to see but causes more visual discomfort so now with all this knowledge on Blue Light what
is TCL doing differently with the next paper phone here first they found a way to fine-tune
the screen's blue light spectrum allowing the blue light range to remain between 457 to about 462nm
tones so that means the phone doesn't have to look bright yellow or orange to reduce the amount of
blue light and I think that's probably one of the biggest challenges for a lot of these tech
companies when it comes to Blue Light is that they're trying to have both the beneficial blue
light get rid of the bad blue light but not have the screen like turn a dark orange color
they're trying to keep a good balance of all the natural colors okay so let's ask the question of,
Do smartphones hurt the eyes? Well to answer that we have to look at digital eye strain as a whole
the symptoms of digital eye strain include eye fatigue eye pain blurred vision headache dry eyes
and even neck and shoulder pain with many of these symptoms stemming from overuse and the challenge
of trying to maintain Focus for long periods of time on something that is so close to your face
with most people on average holding their phone only about 8 in away from their eyes and this puts
a very high demand on the eye focusing systems and the micro adjustments that your eyes need to make
to maintain good visibility and this often results in that eye ache and kind of tired eye feeling
that you experience and while it's a little bit outside of this video there are concerns
that excessive amounts of near device use could be increasing the risk for myopia or nearsightedness
in children but take all of that and then add in poor posture poor contrast from the letters
and the background of the screen bad glare from the screen itself plus the reflections off of
the screen and then poor lighting conditions all of which pushes your eyes to focus harder on the
screen which in turn reduces your blink rate by about 60% as well as decreasing your blink
amplitude which means that when you're focusing on a screen you tend not to blink your eyes as
often and you usually don't blink them completely which means that your eyes are open all the time
your tear film dries out and you get bad dry eye symptoms and there is some concern that increased
screen use could be contributing to the risk of dry eye disease now of course with all of
these advancements I think it's possible somebody could start to make the argument that with such a
reduction in glare and reduction in blue light and the use of next paper mode could that help reduce
how much we hyperfocus on our smartphone screens and therefore maybe somebody's blink rate wouldn't
be as affected and so not only would you have a reduction in maybe digital IE strain a reduction
in all the harsh blue light exposure but then also perhaps dry eye symptoms would improve as well
these are of course just my curiosity thoughts but something I would definitely like to see a
study on now of course digital screens do bring tons of convenience to our daily lives but they
do also come with some concerns too I do think we should all start to think a little bit more about
things like glare and blue light and Ice strain in the way it affects our lives and in that regard I
do feel that what TCL has put together here is the most advanced smartphone screen that I've
personally ever seen and especially considering the fact that these phones like the TCL next paper
40 here only comes in at about $170 with the 5G version coming in at only about $240 means that
you're basically getting one of the most advanced smartphone screens in basically like a budget
friendly phone which honestly just gives me a lot of Hope for kind of better adoption and kind of
the spread and use of this type of Technology but let me pass this off to you what kind of
challenges do you face when it comes to dealing with eye strain and let me know your thoughts
about this screen technology down in the comments either way huge shout out and thanks again to TCL
for sponsoring this video just giving us a chance to get a deep dive on what they're doing with this
new technology and how phone screens affect our eyes as always I'll put additional links
in the description below so you can check this out yourself otherwise thank you so much for
watching keep an eye on it and we'll see you in that next video hopefully with less eye strain