Blue light from a smartphone screen has a detrimental effect on the skin, scientists have found

Four years ago, the whole world was captured by the fear of the blue light of gadget screens. The reason for concern was the science-based suppression of melatonin production in people’s bodies in the evening and at night, which was facilitated by blue light from the screens of smartphones, computers and televisions. Now it turns out that blue light from gadgets also has a detrimental effect on the skin.

Image source: AI generation Kandinsky 3.0/3DNews

There are already scientific works that reveal a significant effect of blue light on skin pigmentation. Blue light increases melanin production, which is unlikely to make a difference for most people. Yet, data shows that blue light has a stronger effect on people with dark skin and is therefore more dangerous for them in this regard, and can also provoke increased skin pigmentation in people with overactive melanin production. Spots on the skin of the face to which we hold the smartphone are obviously not the best decoration, so for people with sensitive skin, this feature of blue light should be taken into account.

Blue light can also destroy collagen (a structural protein) in the skin, which leads to the appearance of wrinkles. Scientists have established a clear connection between the blue light of a smartphone and the appearance of wrinkles, but this only appears with sufficiently close and continuous “irradiation”. For example, you need to keep your smartphone turned on at a distance of 1 cm from your skin for one hour. By moving your smartphone 10 cm away from your face, we reduce the negative effect of light by 100 times. In other words, with normal use of gadgets, this is not such a big danger to skin health. But here it should also be recalled that there are people with increased sensitivity.

The third factor in the effect of blue light on the skin is indirect. This is a well-worn topic of suppressing the production of melatonin, a hormone that plays a key role in the process of falling asleep. Sleep problems will result in skin problems. Lack of sleep, stress before bed – social networks, games and other things will provoke inflammatory processes in the body and result in deterioration of the skin up to visible lesions. Turning off blue light won’t help in this case. It is necessary to understand and accept the hygiene of using gadgets before bed.

In the other two cases, people with sensitive skin can benefit from broad-spectrum cosmetic products. Blue light will be just part of the skin care puzzle, but it’s still up for debate. There are no studies on the benefits of cosmetics for protecting citizens from the light of gadget screens. There is obvious benefit only for cosmetics manufacturers, but that’s another story.