Can Wearing Virtual Reality Glasses and Smart Glasses Actually Harm Your Eyes?
As Lifehacker’s expert on smart glasses and virtual reality, I spend a lot of time bathing my eyes in bright light. Last night, I was testing a pair of soon-to-be-released head-up display glasses that produce 1200 nits. That’s roughly the brightness of a car headlight, compressed into a postage stamp-sized image projected onto glass about half an inch from my eyes. I thought, “Wait, am I frying my eyes ?”
So I called Dr. Sunir Garg, a spokesman for the American Academy of Ophthalmology and a professor of ophthalmology at Wills Eye Hospital, and asked him point-blank, “What am I doing to my eyes by using this thing?” “We don’t think so,” Garg replied. “As long as the light doesn’t physically force you to look away—if it’s a bright screen but it’s not uncomfortable—we don’t think it will cause any harm to your eyes.”
There are few studies on the long-term effects of VR headsets on vision, but the available data does not raise alarm among ophthalmologists. According to the American Ophthalmological Association (AAO) , ophthalmologists agree that there is no reason to worry that VR headsets and/or smart glasses can harm the health, function, or development of the eye.
To close the case, I asked Garg if he had ever seen or heard of any eye injuries due to VR, and he said, “The only scenario [in which] we’ve seen eye injuries is when people were doing something like boxing, tripped over a coffee table, fell, and hit their head.”
At what age can you start using virtual reality?
“What about kids ?” you might ask (you nerd, of course). And there’s good news: VR headset makers may have age restrictions for their products—Meta recommends a minimum age of 10 for its headsets, and Apple says its Vision Pro shouldn’t be used by children under 13—but these restrictions aren’t based on vision research. “The data that suggests VR headsets are a problem for kids is limited,” Garg said. “I think we’ll have to ask [Meta and Apple] where that rationale comes from,” Garg said, “because we’re not really that concerned about it.”
There’s no evidence to suggest that virtual reality headsets cause long-term vision problems in children, but if a child spends all day indoors using virtual reality, it could lead to myopia. However, it’s not the virtual reality itself that’s at fault, but the fact of being indoors. “It appears that being outdoors in natural sunlight helps regulate eye growth and reduces the risk of myopia,” Garg said.
There appears to be some truth to the old stereotype of glasses-wearing bookworms. However, the exact reason for the association between nearsightedness and staying indoors remains unclear; further research is needed.
However, virtual reality can cause eye strain.
Even if VR devices and smart glasses aren’t harmful to your eyes, they can still cause discomfort. According to Garg, when using VR or looking at any digital screen, your eyes move less and tend to blink less, causing them to dry out, which can lead to irritation and eye strain.
To address this issue, you should either consciously move your eyes, blink more consciously, or follow the American Academy of Ophthalmology’s “20/20/20” rule. This means that every 20 minutes, when using any screen, look at something 20 feet (6 meters) away for at least 20 seconds.
Motion sickness and dizziness in virtual reality
Besides eye strain, common problems associated with VR use include headaches, dizziness, and nausea. While these may be vision-related, the primary cause of general VR-related discomfort appears to be related to the inner ear, not the eyes. “Some people are simply very sensitive to motion in VR,” Garg said. “I’m not entirely sure how much of this is related to the eyeballs.”
Your eyes can withstand 1200 nits because they are very strong.
To summarize: the available evidence suggests that your eyes won’t suffer from excessive VR use, as long as you take breaks occasionally and blink enough to avoid discomfort. It’s too late to save our eyesight by soaking up more sunlight as children, but at least we don’t burn our eyes, and it’s comforting to know that the biggest health risk from VR use is scraping your shins on a coffee table.