With school back in session, university and college students are hitting the library, the laptop, and the lecture hall for another year of academia. Some students are lucky enough to not need to work while attending school, while some have to juggle their time with work and study. This can be extremely stressful and doing it all with vision problems can make for a turbulent year.
Library
Even in a world filled with tech, good old-fashioned books still comprise a major part of the school year. Some programs use less than others, but text books still play a massive role on campus and will likely continue to for a long time.
Studying for long hours with vision problems can be the cause of headaches, eye strain, blurriness and other issues. Granted, wearing proper glasses or contacts can eliminate most of these symptoms, you must remember to be diligent to take care of them. Glasses should be kept clean to prevent streaking and glare, while contacts take extra care and students often neglect to clean and change theirs regularly.
Laptop
Whether you’re spending more time on your phone or your computer, it’s not as harmless as it seems. For some, visual symptoms can develop.
According to the American Optometric Association, these issues are known as Computer Vision Syndrome, aka, Digital Eye Strain. With college students spending an average of 3.5 hours per day on their cell phones, and roughly five hours per day on their laptop, digital eye strain is a real risk.
Symptoms involved with Digital Eye Strain:
- headaches
- blurred vision
- dry eyes
- neck and shoulder pain
To prevent your eyes from feeling the strain, it’s recommended to follow the 20-20-20 rule. This rule states: when using a computer or phone, every 20 minutes, take a 20 second break and look at something 20 feet away.
Uncorrected vision problems can increase the severity of digital eye strain symptoms. Because digital text has softer edges, and less definition, there is less contrast compared to printed text. In the presence of even a minor vision problem, digital eye strain symptoms can manifest quickly.
Lecture Hall
University and college students are no strangers to large lectures. Unless you can make it to class early enough to sit close to the presentation, you’re going to be stuck viewing from a distance. Not only can it be difficult to hear the presentation, but often times the instructor/professor will write in small writing, or perhaps it’s not terribly legible. For someone with an existing vision problem this can prove to make learning difficult.
Once more, it’s easy to say glasses and contacts are an easy way to deal with this issue, but not all glasses or contacts are going to be able to function the same way from all distances. Not only this, but if you forget to bring your frames with you to class, or to put in the contacts, you might just be in for a rough class.
If you suffer from existing vision problems, perhaps laser vision correction would be a suitable choice for you. Not only would it help with keeping your eyes feeling strong and fresh during extended lengths of screen time, but it’ll help in many other ways around campus, as mentioned in this article.
For more information or to book a free assessment, click here.