We're Teaming Up with Dr. Bryce Appelbaum to Fight the Screen Time Epidemic
The average adult now spends more than seven hours a day staring at a screen. That's not a niche problem anymore, it's an epidemic, and it's one most people are only half-equipped to fight. It's also why people who take this seriously, athletes, biohackers, and anyone who's paid attention to how their eyes feel by 3pm, tend to reach for TrueDark Daylights during the day. That's why TrueDark has partnered with Dr. Bryce Appelbaum, a board-certified neuro-optometrist and founder of ScreenFit™, to go after digital eye strain from both directions at once: the light hitting your eyes, and how your eyes and brain process it.
An Epidemic Hiding in Plain Sight
Digital eye strain doesn't always look like strain. Sometimes it looks like an afternoon headache you can't place. Sometimes it's brain fog that shows up around 3pm without fail. Sometimes it's lying in bed wide awake after a day that was, on paper, sedentary. Dr. Appelbaum has spent his career pointing out that these symptoms aren't random. They're the predictable result of asking the human visual system to do something it was never built for: hours of sustained near-focus work under artificial light, day after day.
The tricky part is that this problem hides behind normal eyesight. You can pass every line on an eye chart and still be dealing with real strain, because eyesight (how clearly you see) and vision (how efficiently your eyes and brain work together) aren't the same system. Most tools on the market only address one side of that equation. We built TrueDark to fix the other, using the same three-tier light system that guides your eyes through the day.
Two Problems, One Root Cause
There are really two separate failures happening every time you're on a screen too long:
1. The light itself is working against your biology
Specialized cells in the retina exist purely to tell your brain's internal clock what time it is. They don't help you see, they just report light levels. When those cells register the bright, blue-heavy light coming off your screens and overhead LEDs, your brain concludes it's still daytime, even if it's midnight. That's a circadian problem, not a willpower problem, and it happens no matter how good your eyesight is.
2. Your visual system is fatigued from overuse without recovery
Just like any other system in the body, your eyes and the visual-processing parts of your brain can be trained, or left to fatigue. Sustained close-up screen work without any counter-training leaves that system running on depleted reserves, which is where a lot of the headaches, fog, and eye strain actually come from.
Solve only the first problem and you're still asking a fatigued visual system to keep grinding. Solve only the second and you're still flooding your eyes with junk light late into the night. You need both fixes running together, which is exactly why this partnership exists.
What TrueDark Brings: Protection from the Light Itself
TrueDark's side of the equation is filtration. Our Daylights lens is built to filter out the specific wavelengths of light most responsible for disrupting your circadian rhythm and straining your eyes, so your visual system gets a cleaner signal throughout the day and isn't fighting artificial daylight at 11pm. It's a passive fix: put the glasses on, and your eyes are protected for as long as you're wearing them.
What Dr. Appelbaum Brings: Training the System Itself
Protection alone doesn't rebuild capacity, it just prevents further damage while you have it on. That's where Dr. Appelbaum's ScreenFit™ program comes in. ScreenFit™ is a short daily training program, focusing drills, peripheral awareness work, and tracking exercises, built to actively strengthen the visual system so it can handle screen-heavy days with less fatigue over time. Where TrueDark blocks what's coming in, ScreenFit™ strengthens how your eyes and brain handle it.
In Dr. Appelbaum's own clinical view, pairing the two isn't a nice-to-have. Protection without training still leaves you working from a fatigued baseline. Training without protection still leaves your circadian rhythm exposed to junk light every night. Together, they cover the full problem.
Why This Partnership, Why Now
We didn't want to just recommend that people also try vision training somewhere else. We wanted the two approaches actually built to work together, backed by someone who's spent his career studying the eye-brain connection at a clinical level, including work with elite athletes across the NFL, NBA, NHL, MLB, and Olympic teams, where visual performance isn't optional. That expertise is what's behind ScreenFit™, and it's the natural complement to the filtration work TrueDark already does.
This partnership also arrives alongside a practical extension of that same philosophy: TrueDark Rx, our Daylights lens ground to your exact prescription, so the people who already need corrective lenses aren't left out of the protection everyone else has access to. Fixing the epidemic shouldn't depend on whether you already wear glasses.
Explore TrueDark Rx, browse the full Daylights collection, or learn more about ScreenFit™'s vision training program, built by Dr. Bryce Appelbaum.
FAQ
What is the "screen time epidemic"?
It refers to the widespread, largely invisible toll that hours of daily screen use takes on both eyesight and the body's circadian rhythm. The average adult spends over seven hours a day on screens, which strains the visual system and disrupts sleep signaling, regardless of whether someone has a vision prescription.
Why did TrueDark partner with a neuro-optometrist instead of an eyewear brand?
Because light filtration only solves half the problem. Dr. Appelbaum's clinical focus is on the eye-brain connection and functional vision, which is the training side of the equation that filtration alone can't address. Read more about his background in our Meet Dr. Bryce Appelbaum post.
Do I need both TrueDark glasses and ScreenFit™, or just one?
They're designed to complement each other, not replace one another. TrueDark filters the light your eyes take in throughout the day; ScreenFit™ trains the visual system itself. Using both addresses the problem from both directions.
Is this partnership related to TrueDark Rx?
Yes. TrueDark Rx launched alongside this partnership so that people who need corrective lenses can get the same Daylights light-filtering protection, now built into their prescription.
Who is Dr. Bryce Appelbaum?
Dr. Bryce Appelbaum is a board-certified neuro-optometrist and the founder of ScreenFit™ and MyVisionFirst. His work focuses on functional vision and the eye-brain connection, and he's worked with elite athletes across the NFL, NBA, NHL, MLB, and Olympic teams. Learn more in our Meet Dr. Bryce Appelbaum feature.