How looking at your smartphone in bed could temporarily blind you

It seems like the notion that smartphone use is cause for eye problems is indeed true, as two women in the United Kingdom reported temporarily losing their vision in one eye after using their smartphones in bed. When one eye was occluded by the pillow and they were viewing the phone with the other eye, the occluded eye adapted to the dark and the viewing eye adapted to the light.

The women were diagnosed with “transient smartphone blindness”, which isn’t something anyone would want, to be fair.

They went through scores of tests but doctors could not find anything wrong – until Dr Plant, from London’s Moorfields Eye Hospital, asked exactly what they were doing when the episodes occurred.

Turns out, they were grappling with what the researchers have called “transient smartphone ‘blindness'”.

At first, it happened about two or three times a week.

“Although most people view screens binocularly, people frequently use smartphones while lying down, when one eye can be inadvertently covered”, the doctors wrote.

The other patient checked her phone in the mornings before sitting up. But around the same time, she’d bought an iPhone.

“The retina is pretty awesome because it can adapt to lots of different light levels, probably better than any camera”, he says.

According to Plant, the temporary blindness doesn’t cause any long-term harmful effects, and is easily avoidable by simply looking at your phone with both eyes.

One of the women was relieved to know that the blindness didn’t indicate a more serious health condition, media report.

Two women in London experienced a odd type of vision loss.

In both cases studied by the researchers, the patients reported the same behavior before the blindness occurred: They were staring at their phones while lying on their left side in bed.

When the doctors conducted their own experiment with the patients, they found the women did not experience these symptoms when looking at their phones with both eyes. When the women, as many of us do, check our phones, one eye is snuggly closed and resting on a pillow while the other is available to look at the phone.

The study explained that the symptoms were caused by each eye trying to adjust to different lighting. “Smartphones are now used almost around the clock, and manufacturers are producing screens with increased brightness”, the study said.

But the bright blue light emitted by smartphones and tablets has already been the subject of other studies.