I’ve had glasses since I was a small child. Contacts not an option as it turns out there’s no way to get them into my eyes in the first place (plus by this point the prescription to correct my vision is too complex for a contact lens to handle).
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I work with certain insurance plans that include “occupational” computer glasses with a separate refraction process tuned for 2-3 feet in front of you instead of “down the road” distance focal length. Usually it’s offered from tech companies that have lots of screen workers.
Same. I’ve worn thick glasses since third grade. Since people tend to go far-sighted as they age my OD said my distance prescription was reversing yay? but I also now need reading distance correction. not-yay. 
progressive bifocals . OD cheerily reminded me that since I already dealt with extreme prescriptions I wouldn’t have any of the headache/adjustment period to them that some people have.
My last exam though she said my Rx hadn’t changed enough to need to update my glasses, so I got my first supply of daily contact lenses, but I only wear them once a week. They’re convenient because you wear them once and throw them out and don’t have to deal with solutions or cleaning. And since I’m not wearing them every day I didn’t have to buy 300+ boxes of my ridiculous prescription. But they are SO tuned for distance I have to whip out generic magnifying readers to text below 18pt.
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I started wearing glasses when I was, like, 27, although I never have seen right in my life. The two main points against wearing them were 1) I thought it was a major nuisance and 2) the overall stigma of being “four-eyed”.
Now I have been wearing them for the best part of my life as my sight grew worse by the year (I’m still able to drive and live regularly without, but those days are running shorter everyday) and fashion made them a feat instead of an attractor for bullies.
Of course, I spend a lot of time in front of a screen (as in: 95% of the day), and that’s a problem.
My latest model use bifocals, and it took me the best part of an year to get accustomed to them. Yes: when reading I look like one of those middle aged teachers scrutinizing the world with head bent back and the glasses on the tip of the nose.
Oh, wtf, I AM a middle aged teacher.
Ps: no, wearing glasses is not a struggle at all. Still, I use them only when working at the computer or reading a book or watching TV or cinema.
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I’ve been short sighted since my late 20s (now in my early 50s) but I don’t need glasses to read or use the computer. I usually wear them to watch our big telly at a distance, but spend most of my time at home without them on. My vision improved a few years ago, which was nice. Has gone downhill since, but only very slowly. I’m lucky my sight isn’t more badly affected, due to long term steroid use for my autoimmune brain disease. That drug often causes glaucoma or cataracts, or both. So far I’ve dodged those! My vision was also affected by my disease before diagnosis in the late 1990s and treatment started, but improved a lot with that. No more weird wavy/spider lines, visual hallucinations, smoke effects around me, or strange tunnel like vision. Big relief!
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Last month when I got my first pair, I wore them for 3 one-hour stretches which all ended in vomit and extreme headache and dizziness. The doc cheerily told me that this might happen for up to 3 weeks and I was like, screw THAT. Luckily they swapped the lenses for regular distance lenses without charging me and I just picked up some reading glasses from the drug store. Tom tells me old southern ladies are supposed to wear them on a chain and is threatening to buy me one.
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The question for the poll could just easily have been “Are you old?”. 
I’ve need glasses for distance since I was a teenager, but for almost thirty years I’ve had contact lenses instead. Which are great. They’ve come a long way in those thirty years and are very comfortable, soft lenses and very easy to look after & keep your eyes healthy; compared to the early ones I had. The ones I have I can leave in for an entire month if I want compared to the ones I used to have to take out each evening, laboriously clean and leave to soak. (I’m not old enough to have had “glass” contacts.)
Unfortunately, once you hit a certain age your eyes get worse at “accommodation”; switching focus. So, although my eyesight close up is brilliant, when I’m wearing contact lenses my eyes can’t really cope and overcome the distance prescription. In the last few years my contacts have generally been a lower prescription than my glasses as a compromise, to let me still focus on close up things. However, it got to the point where that no longer worked.
Given that my work involves computer screens, I needed to make a choice going forward. There are all sorts of options with contact lenses, such as bifocals and just wearing one lens and training one eye for distance and one for close up but it’s just been easy to switch to using glasses. I don’t particularly like glasses but they function well for work and I can just lift them if I need to read anything small.
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Don’t bother with them. Just get two pairs of glasses. Progressive lenses are even worse than bifocals. At least bifocals have a clearly marked area, progressives have a gradual sweet spot that you are perpetually trying to find the right viewing angle for. They are gimmicky garbage.
Can you tell that I’m unhappy with my progressive lenses? 
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That’s why my glasses are always lower on my nose. I look over them constantly for close-up work.
I think there should be a concerted effort to bring back the monocle.
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Well, that is basically what my optician was suggesting with the single contact lens solution. I feel like it would give me a Penguin-like squint, either way,
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I am so sorry that happened. In the biz we call it “progressive non-adapt” and does qualify you for a free remake/downgrade to single-vision lenses from the lab. I’m glad your provider didn’t give you any problems. Some patients take this as “they’ll remake the glasses as many times as I ask until they are perfect” and it gets ugly when the provider gets fed up eating the cost of further remakes.
I suspect due to the Lasik you went to a weaker Rx for a decade, negating the brain-callus of wearing strong focal length so switching to bifocals that swing you between two prescriptions wasn’t as smooth. 
Many people do just prefer to swap distance/reading glasses or wear contacts and readers.
You could always go for sport lanyards!
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Yes, I’m in the same boat too. When I was wearing contacts full time the absolute best were silicone lenses. They were the most comfortable and I was sleeping in them up to a week before cleaning and putting them back in. Same problem though - without lenses I have macro-vision and can see fingerprints and cell walls and viruses. My glasses or contacts now prevent me from focusing close up which is why the off-the-rack readers are necessary when contacts are in.
It’s called a “monovision” fit/prescription - some people can adapt to that and some cannot. The brain has to learn to prefer input from either eye depending on what you’re focusing on.
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Like many here, I had the experience of looking through someone else’s glasses and being surprised by how distinctly I could suddenly see the leaves on a tree out the window (this was in high school). So, yeah, I’ve had glasses since.
I used to be really good at reading small print. I could read the compact 9-pages-on-one one-volume OED with my naked eye. But, being a gentleman of a certain age, presbyopia has come for me, and I have a pair of progressives. But I rarely use them: unless it’s really teeny print, decent lighting is all I need to read. And my distance vision isn’t terrible. I wear glasses to watch TV or movies, and definitely to drive, but never to talk to someone across a table and (unless watching TV) not in the house.
All this talk has reminded me: I need to order some new glasses. My most recent prescription changed a bit and I haven’t updated them yet…
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I remember trying to read instructions on a bag of rice that were printed in yellow on a white background. Good times.
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I’ve had to seek magnification to deal with the teeny super-narrow print on power adapters and electronics before, but a couple of months ago was my first outright failure while out and about: trying to read a particularly teeny-printed label on a notebook in Daiso to see where it was made. And I just couldn’t.
I now carry a magnifying card in my wallet and have two leetle folding magnifying glasses…
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Well, on the bright side, you’re now well equipped for any mysteries that come your way, and also starting a fire or trying to get the attention of overhead search and rescue meows in the event you ever get comedically lost in the wilderness.
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Smartphones have zoom functions, don’t they? And I’m surprised how close of a distance they can take pictures!
Here’s a 5X zoom of a small label that you can zoom further on your phone photo app!
Of course, you don’t have to save/sync them or anything. Just view it live!
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Yes, phones work - either for the flashlight so you can see fine print, or snapping a pic so you can zoom it. Some phones can even capture text in a picture to copyable text.
It’s also quite handy to see how many USB ports there are on the bottom of your monitor.
I’ve gotten in the habit of snapping and saving pictures of hard to see labels, like the router password that’s printed in black-on-silver on the sticker. Both for visibility and so I don’t have to climb in back or drag it all out.
Black-on-shiny silver is probably the worst combo or in the top three - next to yellow print on white or red text on blue. If black on silver is in dim light it all blends together; if you shine a flashlight on it it all glares.
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I had laser eye surgery last year, before that I had glasses for short-sightedness. A big motivator for getting the surgery was that I would lose them constantly. I would take them off whenever I sat down or did any kind of close work, including reading or eating, and they’d get mislaid.
It hasn’t been completely without drawback. I used to have very good close vision— I could read the silvermarks on jewlery unassisted— and now it’s just ordinary. I’m also concerned it’ll revert after hearing various stories (including in this thread!), as my computer-heavy lifestyle seems a big risk.
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(Very short-sighted since childhood, fwiw.)
The other phone-as-prosthetic wheeze I have (but haven’t had to use yet) is, if I’ve absent-mindedly put my glasses down and can’t see where they are, using a phone camera as a thing that can focus for me, so I can search the room through it.
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I’ve needed glasses since I was fifteen. My current prescription makes one eye see far and one eye see close. So mono-vision, I guess. I do still need to magnify tiny labels and use my phone for that.
I have also learned the 20-20-20 trick to avoid eye-fatigue. If you work in front of a computer, like I’m sure most of use do, take a 20 second break every 20 minutes and look at something 20 feet away. It really does help.
Oh and I wear TRI-FOCAL contacts. Beat that!
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