diop That's an interesting observation.
I'm totally down with the blue light considerations. I tend to follow Dr Jack Kruse who considers blue light to be one of the main issues impacting society today. I have Iris installed on the MBP, and have set the iphone to red screen via the accessibility settings. It does help somewhat, but not completely.
Scrolling definitely sets things off, but not just on the phone. I'm wondering how PWM, dithering and refresh rates interact. If a screen is refreshing 60 times per second, using PWM to dim xx times per second, and is also dithering constantly, perhaps the combined effect is resulting in horrible eye effects.
I've looked further into the latest ipad pros that had a higher refresh rate. It turns out its a variable refresh rate that the system determines based on what's happening. Even then, many apps are capped at 60hz so having the capability means nothing.
I forgot to mention that I also had a lenovo thinkpad for work at some stage, and that used to cause massive issues also. I'm pretty sure it DID have PWM (though my MBP and iphone definitively don't).
So, using the process of elimination (using only information that I know), PWM is not the issue for me in this case, as none of my device use it. The issues still occur with blue light off completely. So it kind of narrows it down to dithering and/or refresh rate. I mean, I know it's not natural to stare into a bright, artificial light source for hours on end, but hopefully I can eventually use a computer like a normal person!