Get outside and get some natural light everyday. They say there’s a hormone produced when sun enters the eyes, and lack of this hormone causes nearsightedness.

Blink! They say we don’t blink as much with screens.

Dark mode. Looking at screens is literally staring at a light bulb.

Put yourself near windows to increase your natural light.

The rule I’ve heard is every 20 minutes, spend 20 seconds looking at something at least 20ft away. If your lectures aren’t too intensive on visuals you may not even need to pause them to do this. Like I imagine it works better with math than chemistry demos.

Can’t believe no one had said this but your vision won’t ‘degrade’ by looking at screens. That’s a myth, you can look this up, you can’t permanently damage your vision looking at a screen like this.

Worst that will happen is eye strain, because focusing up close requires the muscles that pull on your lens to exert themselves for extended periods of time. Worst thing this will do is just give you a headache. Your eyes might also be dryer since you will blink less often. Best thing to do is just take breaks every once in a while.

Someone has mentioned that bright light also stimulates a hormone the prevents nearsightedness, from what I remember this is only valid during your growing years. Idk, look this up if you’re interested, you should be able to find some studies.

Take breaks and go outside where you can look at things that are really far away.

Also, get 8 hours of sleep, eat healthy, drink lots of water, and get your eyes checked out once a year.

Regular breaks would be best, especially if you can go for a little walk around. Another thing would be contrast, so it’s better to have the screen at a similar brightness to your surroundings. I’d also say that distance from the screen makes a difference, so being further away (with bigger text) would help.

Reading glasses allow your eyes to focus at a “longer” distance while doing close-up work. +0.250 or +0.5 diopter reading glasses can reduce eyestrain.

Here’s a few things that helped me when I was at university during the pandemic.

1. Make sure your room is well lit. Natural light is best, but artificial light is better than nothing.
2. If you have a tv, try watch some of your lectures on that instead of on your computer/phone. Focusing on stuff that’s a bit further away is easier on the eyes.
3. Just listen to the audio. I know a lot of lectures have vital visual components, but if you can avoid looking at a screen completely that’s a big win for eye comfort.

I hope some of these help.

Never squint

Make sure your screen’s brightness and text size are comfortable

As long as your screen isn’t very bright it’s fine for your eyes. What’s a lot worse is the sun, it’s much brighter and there is a lot of UV radiation too. So wear sunglasses on very sunny days and you’ll be good

Don’t do meth.

Causes your eyes to degrade.

If you wear glasses, get your next pair with a blue light blocker, those can help. If you don’t, you can get non-corrective blue light blocking glasses that do the same thing.

The other good thing is to regularly take breaks. Every 30-45 minutes, stop for just a couple of minutes and look around, focusing on objects at varying distances.

To support your eyes’ health

• Stay well-hydrated
• occasionally take some zinc, lutein, and zeaxanthin. If you’d prefer food sources, they exist
• Look far into the distance for at least a minute every hour of screen time. The further the better
• Go outside into nature and look at lots of thing
• Exercise
• Get enough sleep
• Make a study of inflammation and seek to minimize it

Maybe a bit too obvious to be saying it but just in case, I always have my screen on the lowest brightness I can get used to. In fact I don’t like my screen too much now because it is at the minimum but I’d like it lower.