Woman Suffers 500 Holes In Her Eyes After Using Her Phone On Max Brightness For 2 Years
Turn your screen's brightness down, people!
By Samantha Khor — 21 Feb 2019, 01:12 PM
If you often reply messages or watch videos on your phone with the brightness fully turned up, you might want to practice caution after reading about what happened to this young woman
Chen, a 25-year-old woman from Taiwan, reportedly suffered severe eye trauma after using her phone at maximum brightness for two years.
According to Apple Daily, Chen - who works as a secretary - had turned up the brightness on her phone so that she could see it while out in the sun and did not turn it down over the next two years
Chen explained that she had first turned the screen brightness up to reply messages while she was outside, as her job requires her to deal with business matters on the fly.
However, instead of dimming the screen, she continued to look at the extremely bright screen after work and even when she's scrolling through her phone before bedtime with the lights turned off.
After two years of using her phone at maximum brightness, Chen began experiencing pain and discomfort in her eyes, which had become bloodshot. Her vision had also become blurry at that point.
When putting eyedrops and artificial tears didn't seem to improve her condition, Chen finally decided to get her eyes checked out by medical professionals.
Doctors soon found that her left cornea was "congested with blood" and that she'd burned up to 500 holes in her cornea
Reports state that her eyesight has also been permanently damaged. She also showed signs of conjunctival hyperaemia, superficial punctate keratitis, and vitreous opacities.
With Chen's eyes at risk of further infection due to the holes in her cornea, doctors prescribed antibiotics and steroid treatment to help Chen fix the problem. Thankfully, her condition reportedly improved after three days.
Dr. Hong Qiting, one of the doctors who attended to Chen's case, said that the young woman's eyes were exposed to 625 lumens every day for two years, which is double the recommended daily level of 300
Dr. Hong, an ophthalmologist at Fooyin University, also notes that exposing the eyes to 600 lumens for just two hours is akin to "getting baked by microwave".
He also suggests manually tuning the screen brightness of your phone according to your level of comfort instead of relying on automatic settings, adding that you should also leave the lights on when you're browsing through your phone at night.