How to keep the screen you’re staring at from frying your eyes

You need less blue in your life, but this isn’t about your continuing obsession with the Royals.

It’s about the screen you’re staring at, and a really easy way to fix it.

It turns out we bombard our eyes with lots of blue light from our phones, tablets and other screens. And that’s not good.

According to the Vision Council, 30 percent of adults spend nine-plus hours — more than half the time they are awake — using a digital device. The percentages are higher for Gen Xers and millennials. And too much blue light damages our retinas and disrupts our sleep, basically telling our brains it’s daytime all the time.

The Vision Council also says more than 70 percent of U.S. adults have no idea about these dangers.

But now you do.

The fix? Well, there are plenty. Fast Company and many other publications have their suggestions, from wearing orange goggles (if that’s your idea of comfort, especially at bedtime) to not looking at screens for two hours before you go to bed (yeah, right — though there is some evidence real books are doing better these days).

But the easiest, to me, is adding software that adjusts the amount of blue light a screen puts out. For PCs and Apple devices, f.lux does the trick. There isn’t an Android version, at least not yet, but I use CF.lumen on my phone. And there are at least five others that work for Android devices if CF.lumen doesn’t suit you.

You’re welcome. And whether your hero (or dream boyfriend) is Salvy, Hos or Moose, trust me. He won’t mind.

This story was originally published November 6, 2015 at 9:37 AM with the headline "How to keep the screen you’re staring at from frying your eyes."