Temporary Blindness Cases Tied to Smartphone Use in Dark

Advertisement
By Associated Press | Updated: 23 June 2016 14:15 IST
Temporary Blindness Cases Tied to Smartphone Use in Dark
Warning: Looking at your smartphone while lying in bed at night could wreak havoc on your vision.

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.

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.

Advertisement

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.

Advertisement

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.

"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.

Advertisement

When they put their phone down, they couldn't see with the phone eye. That's because "it's taking many minutes to catch up to the other eye that's adapted to the dark," Plant said.

He said the temporary blindness was ultimately harmless, and easily avoidable, if people stuck to looking at their smartphones with both eyes.

One of the women was relieved the short-term blindness didn't signal a more serious problem like an imminent stroke. He said the second woman was more skeptical and kept a rigorous monthslong diary tracking her fleeting vision loss before she finally believed him. But she couldn't stop checking her phone for messages from bed, he said.

Dr. Rahul Khurana, a spokesman for the American Academy of Ophthalmology, called it a fascinating hypothesis but said two cases weren't enough to prove that one-eyed smartphone use in the dark caused the problem. He also doubted whether many smartphone users would experience the phenomenon.

Khurana, who acknowledged that he's an avid cellphone user, said that he and his wife tried to recreate the scenario on a recent evening, but had difficulty checking their phones with only one eye. "It was very odd," he said.

 

For the latest tech news and reviews, follow Gadgets 360 on X, Facebook, WhatsApp, Threads and Google News. For the latest videos on gadgets and tech, subscribe to our YouTube channel. If you want to know everything about top influencers, follow our in-house Who'sThat360 on Instagram and YouTube.

Further reading: Mobiles, Science, Smartphones
Advertisement

Related Stories

Popular Mobile Brands
  1. OnePlus 13s Review
  2. OnePlus 13s vs iQOO 13: Price in India, Specifications Compared
  3. Pixel 10 Series Colour Options Tipped; Google Could Drop Iconic Hues
  4. OnePlus Pad 3 With 12,140mAh Battery Launched in India: Check Features
  5. Tecno Pova Curve 5G First Sale Starts Today in India: See Offers
  1. Hugging Face Releases SmolVLA Open Source AI Model For Robotics Workflows
  2. Redmi Pad 2 With 9,000mAh Battery, MediaTek Helio G100 Ultra Chip Launched: Price, Specifications
  3. Alphabet CEO Expects to Keep Hiring Engineers as AI Advances
  4. Amazon Said to Be Preparing to Test Humanoid Robots for Deliveries
  5. Google Doubles Gemini 2.5 Pro Rate Limit for Google AI Pro Subscribers
  6. Apple Said to Have Given iPhone Repair Business to Tata India as Partnership Expands
  7. Huawei Pura 80 Pro, Pura 80 Pro+ Design Teased; Pre-Reservation Begin
  8. Mistral Code AI-Powered Coding Assistant Introduced for Enterprise Developers
  9. Nothing Headphone 1 Launch Date Set for July 1, to Arrive Alongside Nothing Phone 3
  10. Ethereum Foundation Announces Overhauled Treasury Strategy Amid Scaling Push
Gadgets 360 is available in
Download Our Apps
Available in Hindi
© Copyright Red Pixels Ventures Limited 2025. All rights reserved.