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Is Dark Mode Good for Your Eyes? (2020)

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Re: Is Dark Mode Good for Your Eyes? (2020)

#81

Post by walterbell »

Eye health for closeup (e.g. computer) work:

  Ambient lighting ~= screen brightness, whether light or dark
  Dark ambience = dilated pupil = 0.5 diopter decrease in lens focus
  Tear film over eyes helps focus: blink, yawn, monitor dehydration & humidity
  Best light: unfiltered daylight, e.g. window behind computer screen
  Artificial: high CRI LED, low flicker, low blue (e.g. 2700K Sylvane Truwave) 
  For closeup glasses, fixed lens focal length at lens-screen distance
  20-20-20: look out window, or 20+ foot distant object for 20s every 20m
  Daily exposure to natural light, with distance focusing for eye muscles

Re: Is Dark Mode Good for Your Eyes? (2020)

#82

Post by alpos »

Gigachad wrote: post #62
TrianguloY wrote: post #26

> By default, the human pupil changes size depending on the amount of light in the environment This is the key: Do you work on a very illuminated place? Use light mode. Do you work in somewhat darkness? Please use dark mode. At least that's what I try to follow, otherwise at the end of the day my eyes gets very tired.

It's usually always possible to just illuminate the room unless you are out programming at a bus stop at night I guess.

Or you have to use a highly reflective monitor. Or you have a blessed matte monitor but you have whiteboards, stainless steel appliances, glass, bright colored walls, and other stuff at various angles in the environment behind you. In which case the first thing you and everyone else trying to see past the reflections is going to do is dim the lights and lower the shades.

Re: Is Dark Mode Good for Your Eyes? (2020)

#83

Post by taneq »

alpos wrote: post #72

This post seems to boil down to, "I read a summary of one study, so I am confident in telling you all how wrong you are". Thanks but I'll let the scientific process play itself out over time. In the mean time, I appreciate that the public debate has induced phones, apps, and many web sites to give me the option to enjoy reading things all day without eye strain. The fact that more stuff defaults dark mode or follows…

I think your summary here more or less applies to the entire debate, and many other similar debates. When did we forget that personal preference an entirely sufficient reason to make a personal choice? I don't use dark mode because a meta-analysis of opthalmological studies indicates it may improve eye health, I use it because I like it and my eyes feel more comfortable using it.

Re: Is Dark Mode Good for Your Eyes? (2020)

#84

Post by pxc »

ramraj07 wrote: post #6
hosteur wrote: post #2

I primarily use dark mode when I am in the dark or in a dimly lit room. Having any light blasted right into my eyes hurts. And ruins my night vision. And also messes with my sleep.

Quoted post unavailable.

> > I primarily use dark mode when I am in the dark or in a dimly lit room. Having any light blasted right into my eyes hurts. And ruins my night vision. And also messes with my sleep.

> It’s almost like too tongue in cheek that you write exactly like the techbros the article talks about. Did you even try to read the article?

> [...]

> Anecdotal techbro proclamations that dark mode is easier to read has been categorically proven false. It’s not easier to read and it’s not less strain on your eyes.

I did, and I think this kind of reasoning is not wise or meaningfully scientific. Experiencing physical pain in the response to something when you see it is way more immediate and way more relevant to one's own decisions regarding that stimulus than some study about average effects across a population of people who have different eyes than you in a situation that you can only hope is sufficiently analogous to your actual usage. (Note that GP writes only about their own experience— their comment does not contain a general argument.)

The article in the OP mentions that things may be different for people with various eye conditions. Guess what? Experiencing pain from using light mode is pretty much a defining symptom of such conditions.

> Light sensitivity is a condition in which bright lights hurt your eyes. Another name for this condition is photophobia.

https://www.healthline.com/health/photophobia

Through genetic testing, my sister has been diagnosed with a degenerative eye disease which is a cause of photophobia. Despite seeing eye doctors (including various specialists) her whole life, and knowing her entire life that bright light is painful for her, it took her decades to get that diagnosis.

According to your reasoning here, self-advocating for her health and accessibility based upon her own experience of her conditions would have been based on unworthy 'anecdotal proclamations' up until a few months ago.

Let's revisit that characterization:

> Anecdotal techbro proclamations that dark mode is easier to read has been categorically proven false. It’s not easier to read and it’s not less strain on your eyes.

It's very easy to find studies later than the date of the OP challenging this view on eye strain with respect to dark mode, including ones that consider the effects of blue light filters, e.g., https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/9363189/

Why overcommit like that? How does that advance the credibility of any person or honor the science?

Re: Is Dark Mode Good for Your Eyes? (2020)

#86

Post by gnicholas »

Dark Mode is definitely helpful when I'm reading late at night or early in the morning. I don't think any number of generic studies (not focusing on those use cases) would negate my own cognitive perception. YMMV, but mine sure doesn't!

I do find that Dark Mode is not helpful in bright sunlight, and can lead to my iPhone screen acting like a mirror, which is not good. But that doesn't stop me from using it at night!

Re: Is Dark Mode Good for Your Eyes? (2020)

#87

Post by alpos »

ramraj07 wrote: post #6
hosteur wrote: post #2

I primarily use dark mode when I am in the dark or in a dimly lit room. Having any light blasted right into my eyes hurts. And ruins my night vision. And also messes with my sleep.

Quoted post unavailable.

Your tone and overconfidence is the only techbro thing going on here.

You really think you've read enough on this or that there's even been enough study of the topic for you to know with any certainty at all how someone else's eyes are working for them? Pure hubris.

All the data you can read doesn't mean a damn thing for Hosteur's personal experience. Neither you nor anyone you have read has studied that person's eyes, you actually have zero basis for telling them what is easier to read or how much strain they feel in their eyes.

The science on this has been going back and forth for at least the better part of two decades now. Nothing here has been proven, as is the case in most actual science. Any single study merely supports or doesn't support some view or hypothesis. It takes forever to confidently say we know how the eye is even working in these situations, let alone offer some broad recommendation for what every person ought to do.

Aside from that, you are misusing the concept of a categorical proof. The studies at hand don't even address the problem as a categorical concept space. There are no symbolic categories here, no functions mapping objects onto semantic spaces. You are stealing a term you don't understand from a field of mathematics you don't understand to shoot down a person you don't understand.

Stop being an ass and at least try to understand people before you try to tell them what their reality is and what they ought to be doing before bed.

Re: Is Dark Mode Good for Your Eyes? (2020)

#88

Post by oneoneonetwo »

Wow. Read the article guys.

He says eye strain is caused by blue light. That's why he uses light mode.

That makes no sense. Blue light is ORTHOGONAL to the question of whether Dark Mode or Light Mode is better for your eyes.

Does light mode cause eye strain does dark mode cause eye strain? Which is better for your eyes? He doesn't find any research studies comparing the two and he grabs an unrelated study and claims that blue light is the only source of eye strain. I can assure blue light is NOT the only source of eye strain.

This article is biased. He's picking and choosing studies to support a biased agenda.

Re: Is Dark Mode Good for Your Eyes? (2020)

#89

Post by bitwize »

I switched Emacs back to light mode because light mode is, objectively, easier to read.

One thing that helps with the "staring into a glowing rectangle of doom" thing is not having the background set to bright white. I was messing about with old Solaris when I found its terminal windows were much easier to read than xterm's white default. So I set my Emacs background to "OldLace" (#fdf5e6) rather than plain white.

Re: Is Dark Mode Good for Your Eyes? (2020)

#90

Post by [deleted] »

alpos wrote: post #72

This post seems to boil down to, "I read a summary of one study, so I am confident in telling you all how wrong you are". Thanks but I'll let the scientific process play itself out over time. In the mean time, I appreciate that the public debate has induced phones, apps, and many web sites to give me the option to enjoy reading things all day without eye strain. The fact that more stuff defaults dark mode or follows…

[deleted]
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