Smartphone Blindness: 2 UK Women Diagnosed With Temporary Blindness Due To Smartphone Use [VIDEO]
It seems like the notion that smartphone use is cause for eye problems is indeed true, as two women in the United Kingdom reported temporarily losing their vision in one eye after using their smartphones in bed. In a report published on Wednesday, doctors have concluded that the women's eye problems were rooted in their habit of checking their smartphones while lying in bed.
One of the women, a 22-year-old, reported that she started having difficulties looking at objects at night after using her smartphone. According to the woman, she would only be able to see outlines in the dark after using her phone.
The other patient, a 40-year-old woman, experienced a more notable effect, losing her sight in one eye when she woke up in the morning. She would lose her sight for periods of time, some lasting as long as 15 minutes.
Though the loss of vision varied between the two women, doctors were able to find a pretty significant similarity between the two women. As it turned out, both women were prone to using their smartphones while lying on their side in bed.
With this information in mind, doctors were able to hypothesize that the temporary loss of vision experienced by the two women were caused by the fact that they were prone to look at their smartphones' screens with only one eye. Notably, users lying down in bed usually look at their phone's screens with one eye, with the other still buried in their pillows.
Because of this, the eye buried in the pillow becomes adapted to the dark, while the other, the one looking at the smartphone screen, begins adapting to the device's bright screen. Once the smartphone's screen is turned off, the eye looking at the device, which has adapted to the light, would usually take some time before it gets adapted to the dark again.
"What the patients are aware of is the differing visual experience between a light-adapted eye and a dark-adapted eye at low ambient light levels. As they can see well with the dark-adapted eye, it seems to them that they have lost vision in the eye which, a moment ago, was viewing the smartphone normally," the doctors' report read.
Though temporarily losing vision is quite alarming, the doctors have assured the public that the condition is easily avoidable. Nevertheless, the doctors who investigated the case of the two women have advised smartphone users to make sure that they use both eyes when looking at their devices' screens in the dark.
