Day in and day out, we spend a significant amount of time on screens. Our eyes are constantly bombarded with images and the increase in our screentime has negatively affected our eye health.
Juliet Machado, Certified Optometric Vision Therapist, said that the constant bombardment of our eyes is like lifting weights without taking a break.
“Our eyes can easily get exhausted and overwhelmed by the amount of information they’re constantly processing,” Machado said.
That process of collecting information is quite complex. When your eye opens, “a visual symphony takes place,” Dr. Bruce Wojciechowski, Doctor of Optometry and Founding Partner of Northwest Eye Care, said.
Every time you open your eyes, you have to aim them at what you want to process information from, adjust to get the image clear, combine the images from each of your eyes to create a single image (also called binocular vision), your eyes have to follow movement, or move from one target to another to process the words or symbols if you’re reading something.
“These are complex tasks and if the process isn’t efficient or we don’t take regular breaks, fatigue starts to set in,” Machado said.
This is Visual Burnout.
Wojciechowski explained that in the early days of humanity, the human visual system helped with basic survival tasks: gathering food, setting up shelter and fighting off attackers. But as our society continued developing, our visual system had to slowly adapt to our new world.
“Then the Gutenberg Bible was printed in 1455 and ever since then, the visual system has increasingly been under duress,” Wojcichowski said. “Even just during the pandemic, our visual system is on maximum processing and pushed to its limits.”
Machado added that the lack of eye breaks while we spend time on screens means our eye fatigue can compound throughout the day.
“The visual system was never designed to operate at 16 inches, especially not for a prolonged amount of time,” Machado said.
One way to ensure we give our eyes a break, Machado noted, was the 20-20-20 rule.
The 20-20-20 rule means that every 20 minutes, you look up from your screen and you look at an object 20 feet away for 20 seconds.
“The 20-20-20 rule helps give your eyes that break it needs,” Machado said. “Taking a break regularly can actually prolong your work time and increase your focus because you aren’t asking too much from your eyes.”
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Praxi is a Vision Therapy experience in VR and on mobile devices designed to relax your eyes and neuro-visual pathways to restore you to a rested and relaxed state of focus. Through various exercises, you will train your visual system, learning skills such as improving your focus, improving your reaction time, opening up your depth of vision, and increasing your peripheral vision.
