Time & date are so faint, hard to see

I went back to the customization and made the font for the time thicker, then I made the picture on my screen much smaller so it's under the time/date. It's not back to normal, but it is readable. So thank you very much for your help. It's just so odd, like the time/date is grey instead of white. It looks bright white during the customization but as soon as it closes out of customization, it goes back to grey looking. I even tried changing to yellow and it goes from bright yellow, to yellow with a greyish overlay. -I think it might be time for me to think about getting a new phone.

Thank you Alancito, I did that and it looked good but as soon as I hit done and it went back to the lock screen it was faint again :( But thank you very much for trying to help.

I have a choice of 15 circles, the first two look like transparent, solid text but then there are 13 different colors to choose from. It doesn't seem to matter which one I choose, it looks correct when I've tapped done. But then when it goes back to the regular screen, you can see it go from correct - to fainter or greyish. It's never done this before. It's almost 3 years old. Maybe the new update triggered it? I do appreciate you taking the time to help! I'll see what kind of deals are out there for new phones.

16.3.1 Does that mean something?