Brits love gaming—in fact, over 70% of the country’s population actively play their favourite titles on a regular basis. What’s potentially concerning, however, is how long many of us game. In a 2024 Statista survey, 28% of British gamers said they racked up as much as five hours a week. According to the Guardian, however, it’s not unusual for others to spend up to 20 hours a week playing video games—especially if they’re younger.
Of course, gaming for such prolonged periods doesn’t come without risks. Researchers particularly find that, across age and gender groups, it can cause a number of negative physical symptoms. That includes pain in the hands, neck, back, wrists—and the eyes. In fact, eye fatigue and strain were the most common symptoms experienced by the study’s participants.
This has led a number of enthusiasts and professional players to level up their gameplay with one key accessory: gaming glasses. If you’ve been mulling over getting yourself a pair for similar reasons, here’s more on if you really need them and what you should look for when buying them.
Do gamers need dedicated gaming glasses?
The short answer is yes. Thanks to advancements in video game development, even mobile RPGs like Harry Potter Magic Awakened and Stardew Valley have the compelling storylines and graphics typically found in console and PC titles, meaning gamers of all kinds are encouraged to keep playing for longer. The result is excess screen time.
Spending hours looking at screens up close can particularly impact gamers 18 and younger, as it causes their still-developing eyes to keep elongating. As a result, excess screen time related to activities like gaming is considered one of the biggest contributing factors to the ongoing myopia epidemic, where more young Brits are getting diagnosed with short-sightedness.
In adults with fully developed eyes, long gaming sessions can cause fatigue by essentially forcing the eyes to stay in one position for longer. They can also overexpose the eyes to blue light, a bright, high-energy light wavelength that further strains the eyes. That can cause gamers to experience symptoms like headaches and blurred vision—symptoms that can be exacerbated if they also have myopia, which already strains the eyes.
Dedicated gaming glasses work by essentially making it easier for the eyes to see what’s on screen. By offering features like vision correction, blue light protection, and more, they can enhance visual comfort to relieve symptoms of fatigue and strain—helping mitigate the negative impacts of too much gaming and even improving your overall gameplay.
Key glasses features for levelling up gameplay
Credit: Lyncconf Games on Flickr via CC BY 2.0 – no changes were made to the image
For the best effect, make sure your gaming glasses come with a few essential features. Of course, you’ll want to start with adding your prescription to the lenses if you’re diagnosed with myopia or another refractive error. Blue light filters should be your next priority for blocking the glare and reflections that come from your screen—and for bolstering the visual comfort provided by clear eyesight. That’s why you’ll find that Ray-Ban’s prescription glasses can accommodate both vision correction and blue-violet light filters. These features mean you can turn models like the RB5441 and Elliot Optics, both of which can handle even higher prescriptions of +3.50 or -3.50, into gaming glasses by simply adding blue light filters to them upon checkout.
For more serious gamers, such as professional esports players and those looking to go pro, you’ll want to look for additional gaming-friendly lens technologies and frame designs. You’ll find some great examples of what to look for in Oakley’s range of NXTLVL gaming glasses, which is used even by official gaming organisations like G2 Esports. These specs leverage the brand’s Prizm Gaming™ 2.0 Lens Technology, which is designed not just to block blue light from the OLED and LED displays usually used in gaming monitors, but also to enhance the colours and overall appearance of the graphics that come from these screens for improved gaming performance. Perhaps more importantly, their frames are specifically constructed to be headset-compatible and even come with rubberised temple and nose pads, ensuring a secure yet comfortable grip even during longer gaming sessions.
