Slashdot Mirror
Could Your Blackberry Be Damaging Your Thumbs?
Sammy at Palm Addict writes "According to the BBC, Regular Blackberry use 'could damage thumbs', experts warn. Trendy handheld Blackberry devices could cause damage to users' thumbs, doctors are warning. Sales of the £200 gadget, which can be used to email, page and phone, have boomed in recent years with celebrities such as David Beckham using them. But US and UK doctors said repetitive use could cause arthritis or harm tendons in the thumb. Research in Motion, which manufactures the Blackberry, said it would not comment on the claims."
The finding seems to be about the difference between thumbs and fingers, and the fact that thumbs are not designed to be tapping away for prolonged period.
However, why is it targeting Blackberry only? I would imagine this HP4350 and many other devices will give similar problems.
Next time they'll find most Roman emperors died of Occupational Overuse Syndrome because they kept using their thumbs on gladiators or lions.
Rock that crushes, Paper & Scissors that don't matter.
How is this any different from any other mobile device, remote control, game controller, or similar item which has buttons we press repeatedly?
(First Post?)
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
Moderation Totals: Wrong=2, Stupid=3, Total=5.
Seems they took a lot of time and effort to basically say...
"Using your thumbs a lot might make them sore at some point in time."
Like someone else mentioned, its silly that are focusing on one product that will cause this. Almost makes you wonder who got the idea to do this article.
If you know what I mean.
Seriously, doctors in the UK need to take chill pill. It seems every day some Royal Academy of Whatchamacalit is pontificating on the dangers of everything.
Seems a bit nuts to go all Doomsday about this when kids use their thumbs 6 hours a day playing console video games... and when their thumbs hurt, they stop. You don't see GenXers walking around with crippled thumbs, do you?
500GB of disk, 5TB of transfer, $5.95/mo
1) A handful of researchers think that using your Blackberry "repeatedly" might cause thumb damage.
2) There have been no reported cases of said damage yet.
That's pretty much it. A lot of "The Blackberry could..." talk, but little else.
There. That just saved us years of research and tens of millions of dollars. Please remit 10% of that to me for my valuable input.
my hand should be totally numb and unfunctioning given the amount of Nintendo I grew up playing. Yawn. Move-on.
uhh....yes. Do I get a prize?
Seriously though. I love these "could x be harmful?" articles, the answer is always yes. If you do too much of ANYTHING it will be harmful. With that out of the way maybe we can stop jumping up and down and screaming what about the children every time one of these articles comes out...
It is far more painful (and quickly becomes painful at that) for me to try writing an extended amount of anything these days because I typically type almost everything. It is easier and requires less muscle manipulation to type letters and words and symbols using a keyboard than to hold a pencil or pen and actually form the letters, words, and symbols the "old" way. I would say all this repetitive stress injury syndrome crap is due to our increased workloads in Western civilization, not necessarily the fancy new tech gadgets. In the 1800's, one letter could take a week or more to write, send, and get a response to from loved ones or business colleagues. Today it's constant im's, emails, and blackberry messages going back and forth as fast as you can type. Let's face it, today's communication delays are 100% human and have little to do with the technological limits. It took me several minutes to type this crap out, but it takes 0.43 seconds to post it to slashdot. Chill out on the digital communications and you won't injure yourself. Don't chill out and live with the consequences.
I'll attribute that to the fact that the thumbstick locations on the PS2 controller are pretty much crap. At my desk just now, I put my hands in the positions required to use the stick with the thumbs and still have finger access to the shoulder buttons, and my thumbs were already extended from the resting position. The Gamecube controller and XBox S controller put the primary analog stick and shoulder buttons in much more natural positions.
Honor Among Slackers. A veri