Why blue light from excess screen time could be a pocket-sized sun ageing your skin

Research published this week found that British adults spend more time online than anywhere else in Europe. The new report by Ofcom found we spent more than 3.5 hours online each day in 2020 – over an hour more than people in Germany and France.

Add to this TV and laptop time and the average Briton spends 45 hours a week staring at devices, making us a nation of square-eyed gawpers.

Eye care charities have long warned about the impact increased screen time is having on our sight while blue light emanating from our phones and tablets is known to disrupt our circadian rhythms and therefore our sleep patterns, which is why we’re discouraged from scrolling through Instagram one last time before bed.

But there’s a potentially different risk from sitting in front of a screen all day: the uncertainty over whether blue light could have an impact on our skin too.

Wander through a cosmetics aisle and you’ll see a slew of products promising to combat the deleterious effects of blue light damage on your skin. The theory goes that the blue light emitted from screens induces oxidative stress on your skin, prematurely ageing it, causing age spots and wrinkles. Unilever, one of the world’s biggest cosmetics manufacturers, felt the need to warn consumers about the risks of too much screen time on their skin in September 2020.

“Blue light is one of many external aggressors which can have a negative impact on the health of our skin,” said Samantha Tucker-Samaras, Unilever’s global vice president of science and technology for beauty and personal care.

Yet, despite that seemingly definitive statement, science hasn’t come to firm conclusions about the impact of blue light on our skin.

We became conscious of the impact of over-tanning on our skin in the Nineties and early Noughties, and took action to prevent skin cancers by slathering ourselves with high-SPF sun cream before heading out to the beach or even the back garden.

But there are now early fears from some quarters that our mobile devices could be a pocket-sized sun, blasting our skin with harmful blue light rays. According to Unilever, blue light can penetrate through the skin far deeper than UV light – our previous bugbear – into the subcutaneal layer of skin.

“Long-term exposure to blue light has the potential to have a significant negative impact on people’s wellbeing, and we’re concerned people are simply unaware of the risks,” says Tucker-Samaras, who is worried blue light can inhibit melatonin generation, increase the levels of stress hormones in our bodies, and “excite nerves, which in turn disturbs sleeping pattern and circadian rhythm”.

Unilever believes that skin inflammation can increase 40 per cent after sitting for 30 hours in front of laptops or smartphones and that five working days slaving in front of the computer is equivalent to spending 25 minutes in the scorching midday sun without any skin protection.

Not everyone is convinced, though.

“To make it clear, don't be afraid of your computer screen and your phone,” says Ludger Kolbe, a researcher at German skincare brand Beiersdorf – who you’d think would be keen to sell you little pots of cream to protect against the harm caused. Kolbe was one of the authors of a 2020 academic paper that looked into the effects of blue light from mobiles on our skin. “The energy you receive from those devices is an order of magnitude less than the energy you receive from the sun.”

Kolbe’s findings are supported by Terje Christensen of the University of South-Eastern Norway, who also has performed research on the effects of blue light on our skin. “Our main conclusion was that doses of light in the blue part of the spectrum are far too low to cause any effects on your skin, compared with provided ultraviolet radiation,” says Christensen.

Kolbe reckons we’re only talking about blue light now because we’ve managed to largely tame the problem of UV light from sun tanning. “The tiny problem 20 years ago now becomes a bigger problem, because the big problem [UV light] is now a tiny problem,” he says.

Blue light is proven to induce oxidative stress – which over decades of exposure will cause wrinkles – to the skin, says the German scientist. “We can show it’s a good portion of oxidative stress, even in comparison to UV light,” says Kolbe. “It’s not as dangerous as UV but, especially for people who tan easily, it might be a problem because they get dyspigmentation,” or marginally discoloured skin. All that is “annoying, but not dangerous”, Kolbe explains.

So why is there such a brouhaha around blue light? “My personal opinion is that there is a commercial interest in trying to prepare cosmetic formula purchasing from the industry,” says Christensen. “The cosmetic industry thrives on blue light protection of the skin.”

Despite the uncertainty around whether the risks are real, the cosmetics industry is continuing to plough ahead regardless.

Beiersdorf believes that there won’t be a specific anti-blue light cream, but instead any ingredients that can counteract any theoretical damage from blue light – such as Licochalcone A, a natural phenol used to tackle rosacea, among other things – will be incorporated into the ingredients list for pre-existing sun cream.

For those of us conscripted into the work from home army, should we be shunning our screens? If we want to protect our eyes, very possibly: eye charities recommend looking at an object 20 feet away for 20 seconds every 20 minutes you’re staring at a screen. And we should keep our phones well away from the bedroom, not least so that we get a good interrupted night’s sleep.

As for whether mobile phones are the next source of skin cancer?

“There is nothing you have to be afraid of that comes from your devices,” says Kolbe. Compared to Unilever’s claims that a week of working in front of screens is equivalent to 25 minutes on the sun lounger without any cream, his calculations indicate that if you go outside for one minute at the height of summer, it’s equivalent to 168 hours of uninterrupted screen time.