Lower the screen brightness of your phone, TVs, laptop, or tablet. It will be good for your eyes. Research shows that screen brightness affects your eyes. This is because the pupils of your eyes dilate (enlarge) and constrict (shrink) depending on the level of screen brightness (Mathôt & Van der Stigchel, 2015). If the level is high, it shrinks to reduce the amount of light that enters your eyes.

On the other hand, if the brightness level is low, the pupils enlarge to allow more light to get in. In low ambient light and high screen brightness, the pupils shrink to reduce the amount of light entering the eyes. This is not dangerous to your eyes. However, if the ambient light is high, and the screen brightness is low, it can have damaging effects on your eyes. This is because the pupils will dilate to allow more light from the screen, but this will also allow more ambient light. The amount of ambient light will be too high and thus damage your eyes. The best life hack is regulated the screen brightness to be in tune with the ambient light. One way of doing this is by reducing ambient light and increasing display brightness (Beutel, Kundel, Metter, Kim, & Horii, 2000, p. 408).

Another life hack is to reduce screen brightness so that you can avoid glare. Glare can be very damaging to your eyes. So make sure you reduce the screen brightness to a level where there is no glare. For most people having a very bright screen is disturbing, but for some, they spend hours and hours of computer use at a high brightness level. This is very damaging to their eyes. A research conducted by Lanum (1978) showed that long hours of computer use at a high brightness level damages the retina of the human eye. The best life hack is to have the brightness level at a medium level.

How do you calibrate the best screen brightness for you? In modern computers using windows operating system, you can open the control panel, and search, “calibrate.” Then under the display, click “Calibrate.” This will enable you to calibrate the best screen brightness, gamma, color balance, and contrast for your monitor. According to Shui (2012, p. 16), if the screen of your computers is really bright, your eyes become tired after a few hours, and if it is too dim, it takes you longer to focus on objects on the screen (leading to eyestrain—which can damage your eyes). The best life hack is for you to adjust the brightness of your screen relative to ambient light. Better yet, make it as bright as a page from your favorite magazine (Shui, 2012, p. 16). The trick here is to have a balance between your screen brightness and ambient light levels.

Beutel, J., Kundel, H. L., Metter, R. L. V., Kim, Y., & Horii, S. C. (2000). Handbook of Medical Imaging: Display and PACS. SPIE Press.

Lanum, J. (1978). The damaging effects of light on the retina. Empirical findings, theoretical and practical implications. Survey of Ophthalmology, 22(4), 221–249. https://doi.org/10.1016/0039-6257(78)90070-X

Mathôt, S., & Van der Stigchel, S. (2015). New Light on the Mind’s Eye. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 24(5), 374–378. https://doi.org/10.1177/0963721415593725

Shui, S. (2012). Speaking Computer: Learning the Foreign Language of Technology. Speaking Computer.