Don't you dare: Social pressures (and everyday abuse) that ruin your eyes

AN OPTICIANS' network on Spain's Costas has spoken out with concern about social media 'challenges' that could cause serious eye damage – in many cases, irreversible.

Their warnings also serve as good advice – for some of these foolhardy 'dares', at least – for the general population about what not to do with your eyes, such as avoiding exposure to bright lights.

Viral online trends involving putting yourself through unnecessary discomfort to get 'likes' and keep up with one's peers are nothing new, and before the dawn of internet, they tended to happen among friend or school class groups, making them much harder to avoid – and harder to escape the hassle from one's contemporaries if you refused to have anything to do with it.

But with social media, at least, you can log off for a bit, or pretend you haven't seen it. 

The latest crop of these so-called 'challenges', on TikTok, is putting teens in danger of permanently ruining their sight whilst their bodies are still developing.

And again, they are nothing new per se – only the methodology; the 1980s' and 1990s' equivalent involved daring your classmates to stare into a Bunsen burner or magnesium light during science lessons, and kids who rose to it may now be regretting it as they pay their opticians' bill in their 40s.

Bright eyes, damaged vision: Keep toxic substances out of them

Dr Nigel Best of SpecSavers revealed one of the 'dares' involves filling a plastic bag with a combination of bleach, hand-sanitiser and shaving cream, and holding it up to their eyes to make them 'look brighter'.

“Simply don't do it!” Dr Best urges.

“Apart from the fact that it won't make your eyes any brighter, if the bag splits and the contents leak out, it could cause corneal scarring, extreme pain and blindness.”

There's no remedy for the wreckage of bleach or alcohol getting in your eyes, and it really, really hurts.

But if you get any of these substances in your eyes by mistake, rinse them out thoroughly with clean water and go and see an optician as fast as you can.

Lights, filter, double vision

Whatever colour your eyes are, they're beautiful, even – and especially, as it's so unique - if you're one of the rare people born with an eye in each colour, and the trick to making them look great is to coordinate your clothing, accessories and makeup to highlight and complement them.

The only way to change the colour of your eyes is by wearing coloured contact lenses, which is a lot safer than the 'challenge' of trying to turn your eyes blue on screen which is flooding TikTok at present.

This 'dare' involves shining a very bright light directly into your eyes whilst using the S5 filter on your phone.

“When exposed to bright lights, we would naturally avert our eyes and our pupils would constrict,” explains Dr Best.

For this reason, we would never focus our eyes on bright light unless we forced ourselves to do so – those whose jobs involve having to train in on brightness would wear protective goggles.

This natural response 'reduces the amount of potentially harmful light falling on the retina', Dr Best says.

The bright-light-S5-filter combination, forcing your retina to 'cope' with bright light it would normally try to avoid, means 'you risk permanently damaging the light-sensitive cells on it and causing blind spots', warns Dr Best.

For the general population, this is a sharp reminder of how important it is to wear sunglasses with properly-approved lenses during a Spanish summer, and ski goggles when skiing, snowboarding or even just hiking through snowy landscapes, because the light reflecting off the white stuff causes snow-blindness, which is extremely uncomfortable.

'Fingereyechallenge': Why you should avoid straining

Then comes the 'fingereyechallenge', which, for most people, is physically impossible, so there's not much point in trying it.

“It involves holding your finger over one eye whilst looking towards that finger with the opposite eye, for anything up to 10 or 15 seconds, then moving the finger quickly so that, for an instant, your eyes are looking in opposite directions to each other,” explains Dr Best.

“There are six different muscles controlling the movement of each eye,” reveals Dr Best.

“And it only needs one of these 12 eye muscles to become misaligned, for any reason, for you to end up with a squint and double vision.”

Once that happens, there's little or nothing that can be done about it.

You may well have been for an eye test and had your optometrist tell you to look at their finger, held in different places; perhaps you'll have been given exercises to do at home with your own finger.

A common one is holding a finger up in direct line of vision, focusing on the tip, and gradually moving it towards the end of your nose, still focusing on it, and trying not to let it 'split' as it looms nearer. 

But you will only be given 'fingereyechallenge'-type exercises if a qualified optometrist decides you need them, and they would benefit you, by reinforcing your eye muscles; if you haven't received such instructions, just don't.

“Optometrists will sometimes uses tests similar to the 'fingereyechallenge' to check the strength of the eye muscles, but always in a very controlled and safe way,” Dr Best clarifies.

“Unless advised otherwise by your optician, you should never carry out these tests on yourself, as they could lead to eye strain and temporary double vision.”

They also cause eye-ache, which leads to headaches, and might mean that, at best, you need glasses now where you didn't before, or you need more expensive lenses than you originally had.

For those who wish they could wear glasses but don't need them, damaging your eyes is not the way to do it – you can get frames with 'ordinary' glass lenses in them if it's only about the 'look', and then you can take them off and go without them if you change your mind.

This is also good advice to the population as a whole, irrespective of TikTok dares – not to force your eyes to do anything they don't want to do, such as staring at images with lots of detail, or making a huge effort to read extra-small print.

Print too small? Tell consumer authorities

Instructions and ingredients on a huge number of consumer products manufactured all over the world are using increasingly smaller font, to the point where even those with 20-20 vision find them impossible to interpret – and it is worth notifying leading consumer organisations about each and every one you come across, so they are aware and can lobby for action.

Consumer groups have successfully led to a major new customer protection law being signed off in Spanish Parliament recently, and too-small print may be in breach of this.

Meanwhile, take a magnifying glass with you for reading product information when shopping, rather than forcing your eyes to focus on what could damage them irreparably.

“These social media challenges can be extremely dangerous, and can put your eye health at risk,” stresses Dr Best.

“It really isn't worth jeopardising your sight, potentially for life, for the sake of a few likes and shares.”

If you catch your kids, grandchildren, nieces and nephews or younger siblings getting involved in these or other perilous online 'dares', stop them.

And at least you now know what to say to them – and can back it up – in answer to the inevitable 'why', rather than just 'because I said so'.

Specsavers Ópticas is found on the Costa del Sol (Málaga province coast), in Marbella and Fuengirola; on the Costa Blanca (Alicante province coast) in Jávea, Calpe, Benidorm, Guardamar del Segura, Torrevieja and La Zenia; and also in Mallorca, in Santa Ponça.