The Mycenaean

You can find a pair of blue light glasses at a handful of students’ houses due to the increase in daily screen time for kids in online schooling. (Photo courtesy of Alexis Mast)

With students daily screen time increasing tremendously while having to do online learning, blue-light-blocking glasses have been gaining in popularity amongst students.

The advertised benefits of the blue light glasses include prevention of eye disease, less eye strain, and improved sleep habits. So, it makes sense why blue light glasses are attracting more attention during COVID-19, a “virtual reality.”

For some people, blue light glasses are an accessory, but for another portion of blue-light-blocking-glasses owners, the blue light is an addition to their prescription glasses. Optometrist’s highly encourage their patients to get the EBDBlue Plus feature with their glasses which inevitably increases the numbers of blue light glasses owners.

For someone like Connor Blackburn, a senior at Leesville, who doesn’t have any prescribed eye care, he too agrees that online school is challenging to him physically. He said that blue light glasses intrigue him, and he’s looking into buying a pair. “The prospect that I could negate any ill effects of screens is tempting and it is something I am interested in looking into,” says Blackburn, via text message.

There’s plenty of argument about whether blue light glasses are effective and worth the average cost of fifty dollars, but desperate times tend to call for desperate measures. It’s easy to understand why a student facing any bodily fatigue after being behind a screen would be interested in buying a product that is a claimed prevention for their pain. 

Out of a group of one hundred random Leesville students, fifty of them claimed to have blue light glasses. Thirty-five of those fifty students said they felt a difference in their eyes and head irritation after being behind a screen for hours. 

Whether blue-light-blocking glasses are effective or not, they have attracted a large portion of technology users who are confident in their helpfulness.