“Warning: Looking at your smartphone while lying in bed at night could wreak havoc on your vision,” The Associated Press reports. “Two women went temporarily blind from constantly checking their phones in the dark, say doctors who are now alerting others to the unusual phenomenon.”
“The solution: Make sure to use both eyes when looking at your smartphone screen in the dark,” AP reports. “In Thursday’s New England Journal of Medicine, doctors detailed the cases of the two women, ages 22 and 40, who experienced ‘transient smartphone blindness’ for months.”
“The women complained of recurring episodes of temporary vision loss for up to 15 minutes. They were subjected to variety of medical exams, MRI scans and heart tests. Yet doctors couldn’t find anything wrong with them to explain the problem,” AP reports. “But minutes after walking into an eye specialist’s office, the mystery was solved. ‘I simply asked them, ‘What exactly were you doing when this happened?” recalled Dr. Gordon Plant of Moorfield’s Eye Hospital in London.”
“He explained that both women typically looked at their smartphones with only one eye while resting on their side in bed in the dark – their other eye was covered by the pillow,” AP reports. “‘So you have one eye adapted to the light because it’s looking at the phone and the other eye is adapted to the dark,’ he said.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: As any five-year-old knows implicitly. Ditzes.
The world grows painfully more stupid with each passing day. Idiocracy wasn’t satire, it’s a documentary.
Can’t cure stupid!
That is a pathetic tagline, please stop repeating it.
Stupidity is cured by education.
It _NEEDS_to be cured, but unfortunately educators are being outgunned on a massive scale by the powers of fearmongering propaganda, salesmen, data miners, and power brokers. Far too much exposure to ad-laden commercials and product pushing, and not enough rational scientifically valid discussion about what really is and why it is so. The world needs more education and fewer walls.
Can’t educate those who do not wish to be educated.
I don’t believe that. Everyone hungers for knowledge — the question is what information is sold/pushed at people. Distraction is profitable, after all. That is the basis of ads and tabloids: relatively useless info. But in order to live in our modern world, everyone has to learn many skills. Of course, we all have different interests and therein lies the disagreements, but I can’t think of a person who truly wants to be completely ignorant. Those who are selectively ignorant (First, Then poster on MDN immediately comes to mind) repeatedly cherry pick other people’s data to substantiate their opinions. That’s not lack of education, that’s selective and incomplete education.
A Dick Tracy comic strip in the late 60’s said this: “Too much education makes you enjoy being stupid!”
That might seem like “ignorance” on the part of a lesser educated person, but in fact is a reality. My daughter taught school in Japan to internationals and Japanese. The Japanese students were far less able to do word math problems and were less able to do critical thinking. They were excellent to memorizing complex math problems, just not “thinking” problems. Education alone is not it.
“Education” is a multi-faceted beast. I have two brother in laws with doctors degrees and neither has the sense god gave a bent screw driver. I only have a masters degree. When they want critical thinking or problem solving question, they come to me, or my daughters who are excellent in this realm. Problem solving, whether it be math, physical, mechanical, philosophical, psychological is totally different from what is required in most upper educational institutions.
Like I said MacUser – you can’t cure stupid! I can’t believe you wrote that long dissertation on my comment! Unbelievable!
This could have easily happened to 2 men.
No, it couldn’t. ‘Cause guys aren’t that st****!
So the myth is true, you will go blind.
Still need 3 eyes to see it in the sunlight.
Hmm I’ve been probably reading my phone this way for years in bed and haven’t had any issues. Sounds like fear mongering.
There are many instances where one eye is subjected to bright light while the other is not, for example the patches used by pirates and pilots.
“Aircraft pilots used to use an eye patch, or close one eye to preserve night vision when there was disparity in the light intensity within or outside their aircraft, such as when flying at night over brightly lit cities, so that one eye could look out, and the other would be adjusted for the dim lighting of the cockpit to read unlit instruments and maps.”
As such, I don’t know what this doctor is going on about. Freaky FUD appears to be the summary here, until this story is better documented.
I agree, this is BS. Another example is the treatment for lazy eye – where an eye patch is worn several hours a day (without going blind).
The vision problem is easily prevented simply by rolling over onto the opposite side every 2 minutes.