Eyes and Ears

Rest Your Eyes-

If you stare at a small screen in a swaying bus or subway, your eyes get fatigued due to the eyeball movements. Your eyes get stressed out, too, because the eye muscles controlling accommodation have to work too much than usual.

For growing children and teenagers, especially, such toil on the eye muscles may impair vision due to refractive error.

Small screens discourage blinking, also, leading to dryness of the eyes, known as xerophthalmia.

The layer of tears protects the surface of the eyes for approximately 12 seconds, but any longer and the tears evaporate. So when watching animated pictures for a prolonged period of time, you must force yourself to blink.

Professor of Ophthalmology at Sungkyunkwan University School of Medicine, Samsung Medical Center Jeong Tae-yeong advises, “The right posture for watching small screens is not much different than reading books or newspapers properly. Stay at least 30 centimeters away, relax and be seated comfortably erect to ease the tension on your eyes.”

To prevent eye fatigue, you should close your eyes or observe a remote object for 10 minutes every hour.

When your eyes are stressed out, it’s best to activate the acupuncture spots near your eyes. Press your temples and the hollows between the nose and the corners of eyes. Also, close your eyes and pinch the center of your earlobes for 10 seconds with your thumb and forefinger just hard enough to feel a little pain.

Professor of ophthalmology at Yonsei College of Medicine Severance Hospital Kim Tae-im explains, “Watching motion pictures in the dark and relying on the faint lighting for a long time increases the tension put on the eyes. You should always turn on a second light to prevent vision deterioration.”

Lower the Volume and Listen For No More Than 3 Hours-

Small screens are always accompanied by earphones that can impair hearing.

A team of professors at the Yeungnam College of Medicine surveyed 68 teenagers aged 13 to 18 on the time of their earphone usage and hearing ability, and came up with results that said teenagers who used earphones for 1.0 to 3.0 hours in one day can barely hear 7.1 to 10 decibels at 400 Hertz, but those who listened for more than 4.0 hours could detect sound only at 19.1 to 23.3 decibels.

Doctor Jeon Yeong-myeong explains, “At noisy places like the subway or bus, the volume is naturally turned up. You should try to lower the volume consciously, and listen for less than three hours at the most.”

If the person next to you can hear the lyrics, the sound is equivalent to a jet take-off, which is over 130 decibels, and can be the cause for hearing impairment.

If you experience symptoms while using earphones like numbness, ringing, hypersensitivity to surrounding sounds, difficulty in understanding words in crowded places, or the inability to distinguish telephone rings, you should see a doctor right away.

When watching a small screen, you automatically hold the screen with one hand and hang your head. This posture induces neck and shoulder pain.

Kim Seung-gi at the Daejeon Sun Hospital Joint Center says, “Pain around the neck and shoulders means the muscles are fatigued and damaged. During 10-minute intervals each hour, you should stretch those muscles to ease the tension.”

Jin-Han Lee likeday@donga.com