Instagram Is Making People Temporarily Blind

Instagram is bad for you, and I’m not just talking about your self-esteem. Two women who used their cell phones at night went temporarily blind, according to the New England Journal of Medicine.

One woman is 22 years old and suffered from impaired vision at night. She had been having a hard time seeing out of her right eye for a few months when she went to get it checked out. The other woman is 40 years old and had the same impaired vision in one eye that would last for the first fifteen minutes of the morning. Doctors could find nothing wrong with both women, but after taking a deeper look at their daily lives, they found that both women were guilty of using their phone in the dark before bed.

But why was one eye worse than the other?

Think about the position you’re in when you’re scrolling through Instagram or Twitter before bed. You’re not flat on your back, because after having your phone fall on your face once or twice, you know better than that. Typically, you’re laying on your side, with one eye partially covered by your pillow. The eye buried in your pillow has time to adjust to the dark, the one checking your phone doesn’t. The two women were both making the same mistake of staring at their phone with one eye inadvertantly covered in the dark, and they suffered temporary blindless as a result.

The doctors were proven right when they had both women stare at their phones in the dark and found “their vision was considerably reduced … and took several minutes to recover.”

If these doctors think I’m going to stop using my phone before bed in the dark, they are poorly mistaken. I will, however, turn down the brightness. I’d rather be temporarily blind than miss another one of the Kardashian’s fire ‘gram posts. .

[via Elite Daily]

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