One thing that we perhaps can’t go back to is a life without smartphones. That along with a multitude of other devices such as laptops, tablets, smart TVs and such make up most of our screen time throughout the day. That caters to almost all of our needs for entertainment, education, work, and so on. Playing games, streaming content, reading books or other documents, all of it can now be done via the devices mentioned above. The result is that we are left staring at a digital display for hours on end.
Experts warn so much of screen time is grossly negative for our well-being. It can affect both our physical and mental health over the long run. So, if screen time can be considered bad, is there something we can consider as good screen time? Fortunately, yes, we do have an alternative that can be considered good screen time. It is e-paper displays such as those E Ink comes up with. But before we get into why e-paper contributes towards good screen time, here is a short discourse on why conventional displays are bad.
The biggest problem with conventional displays such as LCD or LED is that they are backlit. They need to have a constant light source from behind for the contents of the screen to be visible. When you are in a brightly lit region or in direct sunlight, the backlight has to be at its brightest to ensure the screen remains visible. Since all of the light is ultimately incident on the eyes, staring at the screen for long eventually leads to what has come to be known as ‘digital eye strain’ or ‘computer vision syndrome.’
Among the visible symptoms of such conditions is a reduced blinking rate when staring at an illuminated display for long hours. This causes dry eyes and eye strain. The effects can be even more serious for children who may lose their ability to track across a page in extreme cases. It is for this reason that exposure to digital displays such as smartphones, tablets, TVs, and such should be restricted, something that is even more critical for children.
While being exposed to bright light for long hours in itself is hugely damaging for the eyes, prolonged exposure to Blue Light is also equally harmful. Research has shown blue light to have the shortest wavelength and highest energy. They hinder the normal ability of the damaged cells in the eyes to repair themselves, thereby causing irreparable damage to the eyes, something that applies to children even more.
Apart from this, blue light is also known to hinder the normal production of the hormone melatonin in our body which in turn disrupts the normal sleep pattern of the body. With more blue light exposure, more of the melatonin hormone is produced which prevents the body from going to sleep. With less sleep, you are led to a condition where you have high stress, which can lead to other health issues such as heart disease, diabetes, and depression.
What about Good Screen Time?
All of the above discourse might lead you to believe screen time is always bad though that isn’t the reality. As already stated, we can have good screen time thanks to e-paper displays, and that has to do with the inherent technology powering the e-paper displays.
For one, E Ink is not an emissive display, which means there is no light projected from behind the display to make the contents of the screen visible. Rather, it depends entirely on the ambient light to make the screen visible, just as it is with real paper. This quality also makes the display to be perfectly visible even in direct sunlight, something that LCD or LED displays would struggle to achieve.
All of this is possible owing to the inherent nature of the display technology. Broadly speaking, the display comprises hundreds and thousands of tiny ink capsules comprising black and white ink. It is either the white or black ink that gets shifted to the top depending on the electric charge provided. The arrangement of the white or black ink droplet creates a page comprising of an image or text that we see.
The ink droplets arrange themselves each time you turn the page, which means the page is recreated every time the page turns. All of this takes place in less than a second, which seems almost instantaneous when it comes to showing static images or texts but is not fast enough to show video content. This makes e-paper displays ideal for things like reading books, PDF files, or office documents, jotting down notes, drawing, and so on.
With there being no backlight, it allows for a completely glare-free reading experience. Users will have zero eye fatigue even when using their device for long hours at a stretch. This even applies to those who are engaged in fieldwork where conventional tablets tend to lose their visibility drastically. In comparison, tablets having e-paper displays offer excellent visibility in sunlit or brightly illuminated conditions.
With no light befalling the eyes of the users, there is vastly reduced blue light exposure for the users. This ensures healthy production of the hormone melatonin as well as negligible disruption, if any, to the usual sleep pattern. Users can enjoy a normal and healthy lifestyle devoid of any stress induced by prolonged exposure to LCD or LED displays.
As it is, too much exposure to conventional displays can severely impact mental health, often leading to conditions such as a lack of learning ability or pre-mature memory loss. More severe cases might even develop dementia which is characterised by accelerated loss of brain mass which otherwise occurs normally as we age. You are least likely to have such issues with e-paper displays.
No wonder, there is a growing rush towards the adoption of e-paper-based devices such as e-readers and e-note devices for use in diverse environments such as education, research, office work, programming, digital drawing, and so on.
With a keen interest in tech, I make it a point to keep myself updated on the latest developments in technology and gadgets. That includes smartphones or tablet devices but stretches to even AI and self-driven automobiles, the latter being my latest fad. Besides writing, I like watching videos, reading, listening to music, or experimenting with different recipes. The motion picture is another aspect that interests me a lot, and I’ll likely make a film sometime in the future.
