How Far Should You Sit From Your Screen?
Techquickie
·Techquickie
·2018-05-06
·
913 words · ~4 min read
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thanks for watching techwiki click the subscribe button then enable
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notifications with the bell icon so you won't miss any future videos
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i don't know about you guys but my parents were always yelling at me about
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sitting too close to the tv blah blah blah glasses blah blah blah blah go
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outside and play with your friends ma you know i don't have any friends why
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do you keep bringing it up anyway back on topic is there truly a
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correct distance to sit from your screen well let's start with unpacking the
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claim that sitting too close to the tv is bad for your health well as it turns
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out this widespread belief may have originated from a legitimate concern
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over a tv recall in the 1960s where a
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certain line of defective televisions actually did emit a significant amount
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of x-ray radiation that is bad for your eyes
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and everything else but given there haven't been any reports
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of this problem since then why are people still concerned about it
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well eye strain is something that you've
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probably experienced after focusing on anything for a long enough period of
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time even books or magazines this happens because the muscles
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attached to your eyes tense up to help them focus so just like any other muscle
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if you tighten them up for long enough they start to ache
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and there is some truth to this effect being stronger with a backlit source if
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your eyes need to be constantly adjusting between the brightness of your
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screen and the sharply contrasting darkness of your room you'll experience
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this eye strain fatigue more quickly
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there is good news though you can slow down the effects by blinking more
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frequently to moisturize your eyes glancing away from your book or monitor
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periodically and by using a moderate brightness that's not too dissimilar to
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the brightness of your surroundings that and eye strain is easily relieved
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and doesn't cause any long-term problems as far as we know just rest your eyes
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for a while by moving to a dark environment or relaxing them by not
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focusing on anything too intently with that said
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we still don't recommend sitting too close to your screen not because it'll
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hurt you but because it'll hurt your viewing experience as we explained in
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our video on retina displays which you can check out up here the correct
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distance to sit from your screen is at least far enough where you can't make
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out individual pixels that will make the image look blocky and distorted
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so if you're in the market for a new display there's a simple way that you
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can figure out what size you should buy for a 1080p display figure out how far
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you'll be sitting from the screen and divide the distance by about 1.6 to get
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the size of the largest tv or monitor you should purchase
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you may even want to get something slightly smaller to be on the safe side
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with respect to image quality but there's no reason to get something much
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smaller than the formula recommends as for 4k displays the pixels are much
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smaller so you can get away with buying a larger screen especially as that will
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make it easier to see details that the higher resolution makes possible so for
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4k your display size should be about the same as your viewing distance or just
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slightly smaller and that's it once you've done some simple math
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purchased the right display oh and maybe installed some bias lighting which we
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covered here behind the display to improve contrast and reduce eye strain
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even further you're all set to sit on your butt and stare at techquicky for as
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long as you want we won't tell your mom today's episode
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is brought to you by random facts about bears did you know that when bears
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hibernate they actually don't have to go to the bathroom
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any waste material is converted into protein
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which is weird and gross
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our next bear fact comes from a hunting story involving u.s president theodore
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roosevelt the story goes that president roosevelt was hunting bears when his
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party saw a wounded black bear cub teddy ordered a merciful death for the
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cub and the story was memorialized in a political cartoon in the washington post
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seizing an opportunity a new york toy store owner started manufacturing teddy
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bears and the name stuck couldn't they have just like
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taken to a vet that actually seems like it would have been a lot more humane
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anyway the malayan sun bear is also
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known as the honey bear because honeycombs and bee larvae make up such a
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large part of its diet bee larva anyway you can get your very
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own free bear over at tunnelbear.com
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Linus we've got that linked below it's a vpn software
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so thanks for watching guys like dislike leave a comment if you have a suggestion
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for a future video check out our other channels and subscribe with the bell
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icon okay no no no no lower priority let's
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get the thing done you're not going to keep them on the screen you cannot
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defeat them all dennis okay let's get the pickups done i got a meeting