Do kids need blue light glasses for online class?

Your child is on a screen for hours a day and complains their eyes are tired. Blue light glasses are marketed hard at exactly this worry. We sell them, and we would rather tell you what they do and do not do than let the marketing answer for us.

The honest position

Blue light lenses are a comfort product. They are not a protective one. There is no good evidence that blue light from screens damages a child's eyes, and there is no good evidence that filtering it prevents any eye disease. Anyone telling you a lens protects your child's eyes from screen damage is going beyond what is known.

What some children do report is that screens feel a little easier with them on. Comfort is a legitimate reason to buy something. Protection from harm is not the reason, and we will not sell it as one.

What is actually tiring your child's eyes

The fatigue is real even though the blue light explanation is weak. Three things drive it:

Blink rate collapses. Concentrating on a screen cuts how often and how completely we blink. The tear film thins out and the eyes feel gritty and hot. This is most of the story, and it has nothing to do with the colour of the light.

Sustained near focus. Holding focus at one close distance for an hour is muscular work. Children do it without complaining and then melt down at 4pm.

An uncorrected grade. This is the one that matters most, and it is the reason a lens purchase should never come before an eye test. A child with an uncorrected prescription is working far harder than a child with the right lenses, and no filter fixes that. Some of the children brought to us for blue light glasses turn out to need a prescription, and some are already wearing an out-of-date one.

The four things that help more

• An eye test first. Not last. Correct any grade before buying any feature. This is the whole game.
• Breaks that actually happen. Every twenty minutes, twenty seconds looking at something across the room. Set a timer, because a child will not.
• Time outdoors. More time in daylight is associated with slower progression of short-sightedness in children. It is one of the few levers with real support behind it, and it costs nothing. Get them outside.
• Set up the desk properly. Screen at arm's length, top of the screen at or just below eye level, the room lit rather than a bright screen in a dark room. Laptops on a dining table put children's heads down and their eyes too close.

When the complaint is not fatigue

Book rather than adjust the desk if your child squints at the television, sits progressively closer to it, tilts or turns their head to look at things, covers one eye, or has headaches on the days with the most reading. Covering one eye in particular deserves a prompt appointment — when one eye is consistently ignored during childhood its vision can fail to develop properly, and the early years are when that is most treatable.

And if their grade is climbing year on year, ask the optometrist about it directly. There is a category of lens designed to slow myopia progression in children — Hoya MiYOSMART, Essilor Stellest and Shamir Optimee. Whether any of them suits your child is a clinical judgement based on their age, grade and rate of change, not a product to choose off a page. These are for slowing progression, and they are not a treatment for a lazy eye, which is a different problem entirely.

Book a Vision7 eye test

Book a Vision7 eye test at your nearest Vision Express store before you buy any lens feature. Our seven-step exam measures your child's prescription objectively rather than relying on a young child answering questions reliably, checks that both eyes are working together, and includes a visual health step.

If the exam finds a grade and your child's day runs on a screen, ask for Opulens Blue Light 1.56 at the counter — sold for screen comfort, which is what it delivers, on top of the correction that is doing the real work. Ready in one to two days.

If you would rather not wait, ask for Opulens Advanced 1.60 — in stock and ready in 20 minutes, which with children is the difference between a pair that gets worn and a pair that gets forgotten.

Every pair comes with a 1-year warranty, free lifetime ultrasonic cleaning and free lifetime custom fitting and adjustment. Bring them in whenever the frame stops sitting straight, because with children it will.