If you spend a lot of time looking at screens, you’ve surely become a target for advertisements for a certain product: blue light-blocking glasses. These are glasses that block out blue light with the aim of making screen time easier on your eyes. Whether you’re intrigued or just a skeptic trying to poke around some more, you might eventually find yourself looking into these things. Well, that’s what I did, and my conclusion (for now at least) is that you can basically achieve the same benefits you would get from buying blue light-blocking glasses by simply turning on display modes named things like “Night Light” on your phone or computer.
Do Blue Light Blocking Glasses Work?
The answer to this one is pretty easy: Yes, blue light-blocking glasses indeed “work”, in that they block blue light.
That’s not the whole story, though. Looking into a few sources (specifically stories published on the websites of USA Today, CNET, and the Mayo Clinic Health System… yes, these are secondary and non-scientific sources, but the primary sources they used all seem to check out and more importantly all said similar things about the relevant science), it seems pretty clear to me that blue light by itself is not actually harmful to your body or your eyes, as both direct and indirect sunlight contain way more blue light than a screen using LEDs. In the next few years, it’s entirely possible that new research will emerge confirming that the unique exposure we get to blue light from screens is more harmful than other types of blue light, but I think it’s more likely that the bulk of any optical harm associated with screen time is based on the fact that you’re staring at tiny letters very near your face rather than any specific wavelength ranges making up those visual components.
That said, although we as humans are built to take in way more blue light from the sun than we do from screens, blue light exposure can “harm” us in one specific way: By potentially messing with our sleep. It seems that blue light exposure can serve as a signal to our bodies that it’s daytime, which can in turn harm our sleep rhythms. This obviously sounds bad, but there is already a solution to this that is very possibly already on your computer/phone. That’s right, the humble “Night Light/Night Mode/Warm Light Mode”.
Night Mode Displays Already Block Blue Light When It Matters
On my phone (Android. Well, specifically, Lineage OS), it’s called “Night Light”. On my computer (Windows 11), it’s called “Night light”. On Samsung TVs, it’s called something like EyeComfort Mode. These settings can be found in the display settings pretty easily, and they all do the same thing: reduce blue light exposure, with the default option often being to do so at night, from sunset to sunrise. All you have to do is set it and forget it. If you don’t like using location settings, some platforms let you just set your own schedule, but even beyond that you can always just toggle it on and off.
Don’t Buy Blue Light-Blocking Glasses… At Least Not Yet
The way I see it, using these night light modes on your screens will be just as beneficial as buying blue light-blocking glasses and wearing them only in the evening to avoid disrupting your sleep. If you use scheduled modes, it’s even easier than the glasses, because you don’t have to remember to put anything on. In other words, next time you find yourself thinking about if you should get some blue light-blocking glasses, just turn on the night light mode on your phone and computer instead. Until studies overwhelmingly confirm that blue light from screens is specifically harmful (in which case getting blue light-blocking glasses to use for work/gaming/etc. would make sense), we’re all probably better off just reducing our screen time anyway, or finding other ways to give our eyes a break, like by using grayscale display modes, which might also reduce eye strain.
Wait, Why Do You Care?
As a video game site, My Dpad cares about all things that affect “the gamer class” (I’m joking, please don’t take me seriously), and this absolutely includes market fads/questionably beneficial technology. There will always be gamer snacks (just get regular snacks!), RGB peripherals (totally fine as a style choice, but surely an over-represented taste), and gold-plated HDMI cables (which may be more protected from corrosion 50 years from now but which definitely will not give your monitor more RAM) out there trying to cash in on whatever “being a gamer” means. Blue light-blocking glasses aren’t only marketed to gamers, but I definitely see “gamers” as one of the main markets for these things, so I figured I’d get out there and throw in my two cents, especially since my advice involves not buying anything you don’t already have.
