Blue light is necessary and its part of the full spectrum of color emitted by the sun. This blue light activates many functions in the body and brain; keeping us awake, alert, and boosting our mood during the day.
So, the problem is not the natural blue light we need, it’s the artificial blue light we don’t and have introduced into our environment and now expose ourselves to, day and night.
Amplify this problem for the developing brain and body of a child.
Do kids go through the same sleep process as adults?
Whether a kid or an adult, the process of melatonin (our sleep hormone) production and secretion is the same. The production part of the process starts earlier in the day and is activated by light. Also affected by light is the secretion process. As the amount of light entering the eye dims, with the setting sun, the brain registers this change. This triggers the secretion phase, melatonin enters the bloodstream, and we become sleepy. Kid and adult alike.
What happens when the lights don’t dim?
We live in a very lit-up world. We have lightbulbs beaming down on us, TV light streaming around us in multiple rooms of our houses, and our eyes are being bombarded at a close range by the devices in our hands. When it comes to kids, these devices are the biggest culprit. Most adults didn’t grow up with these close-range devices that are available to kids today. We still had TV, game devices, computers, but now we also have phones, tablets, laptops, used for many more hours a day.
The result is a higher exposure to light at night than ever before, particularly the artificial blue light that electronic devices and LED lightbulbs emit.
How is it possible for our brains to function properly, as it receives mixed messages from the environment it relies on. Compound this in children, with larger pupils and more sensitive eyes.
A study of elementary school children to adults compared the influence of light at night on melatonin suppression. The results suggested that children’s melatonin is more sensitive to light, being suppressed twice as much as it was in the adults.
And another study found similar results; pre-puberty children experienced significantly more melatonin suppression when exposed to light at night, compared to those post-puberty.
Do blue light glasses work for kids?
The ideal is to limit all artificial blue light exposure from the time the sun sets, to time to sleep. But anyone with kids knows this is a tall ask – difficult to not use screens or watch TV, but hardly practical to not use lightbulbs in the house. The alternative, and more likely to be followed regularly, is to block the blue light around them and eyewear is an easy way to do this.
For this reason, we have a range of blue light blocking glasses for kids. With the help of experts in photobiology and optics, we created lenses infused with proprietary pigments to effectively block the most harmful range of blue light - Day Lenses block 95% and Night Lenses block 100%. And to make sure they are worn…we designed them to look stylish and feel comfortable to wear. Probably considered the most important factor by kids, rather than the long-term health benefits wearing them will provide….
For details on each frame style, check out our size chart. The kids frames are best suited to ages 4-10 years. For those 10+, we recommend the Nates and Clydes, as our most popular styles amongst the teens.
