Doctor Warns of the Hidden Danger of Touchscreens

snydeq writes "Dr. Franklin Tessler discusses the hidden stress-related injuries of touchscreen use, and how best to use smartphones, tablets, and touch PCs to avoid them. 'Touchscreen-oriented health hazards are even more insidious because most people aren't even aware that they exist. The potential for injury from using touchscreens will only go up ... as the rise of the touchscreen means both new kinds of health hazards and more usage in risky scenarios,' Tessler writes, providing tips for properly positioning touchscreens and ways to avoid repetitive stress injuries and eyestrain."

Comments

My wrist hurts!

[coldsalmon]

I'm wearing a wrist brace right now because I held my Nook Color one-handed for too long over the course of a couple of weeks. Obviously I can't say for sure that this was the cause of my pain, but it gets worse when when I hold it in one hand only, and better when I use both hands or support it some other way. I wish I had thought of this before I started using the Nook. Yeah it's not a problem of national concern, and the article uses absurdly alarmist rhetoric, but these are real sources of pain and it's always good to have tips on how to avoid pain.

Because it pertains to nerds

[Compaqt]

What are you talking about? Good on you for having great health.

Meanwhile plenty of geeks suffer from computer-related health problems. The most common up to now has been carpal tunnel or repetitive stress syndrome.

The advent of touchscreens means people are bending their necks downward for extended periods. For many/most it may not be a problem.

For others, it can result in cervical spondylosis, a debilitating condition of the neck.

The reason for such articles is to encourage people to take preventive measures. One of the best is Workrave, a break reminder program for Win and Lin. Click to install. (Deb/Ub/Mint)

Re:Because it pertains to nerds

[AlienIntelligence]

What are you talking about? Good on you for having great health.

Meanwhile plenty of geeks suffer from computer-related health problems. The most common up to now has been carpal tunnel or repetitive stress syndrome.

One trip to a REAL doctor and you'll find that CTS, really doesn't
exist for people that use computers, correctly.

I can give you the number to a real Dr, if you'd like to talk to him.

I'm sure he would have loved to make the money from the surgery
on my ex-wife's wrist. Instead, he said... adjust your chair height
to where your arm, at 45 degree extension, will have your radius/ulna
parallel and about an inch above the desk surface. Buy a gel pad
for the kb and the mouse and you'll be fine in a few months.

And she was.

I had the same thing... absolutely crippling pain from the base of
my palm, all the way thru my shoulder-blade. I raised my seat,
maybe an inch. Gone in months.

If you have your chair at the wrong height... put too much weight
on your wrists when you type and mouse... you will get symptoms
that appear to be CTS and RSD... but aren't. CT scan will prove it.

Myth, busted.

-AI

Re:Because it pertains to nerds

[tlhIngan]

The advent of touchscreens means people are bending their necks downward for extended periods. For many/most it may not be a problem.

I doubt that. People have been reporting problems before touch screens. Blackberry users, for example, but also people who text a lot on their non-touchscreen phones.

The medical condition is real, but the cause is not - it's not a recent thing brought on the explosion of touch screens - it's been around for years. Notably brought on because the folks with blackberries (out over a decade) tend to be older businesspeople and thus experienced it years before. Or people texting on their phones for nearly two decades now. And young kids have been glued to their Nintendo portables for nearly 2 1/2 decades.

Re:Because it pertains to nerds

[eulernet]

Adjusting your seat is a good advice, but you should also change your position.
When your body starts to hurt, just listen to it, and change your position by straightening your back, it's very simple and effective.

Also, I recommend using a Trackball, because it's the horizontal movements when using a mouse that hurt your wrist.
I personally use a Microsoft trackball, mine is at least 6 years old, and still working nicely.

Re:Why is this crap even on Slashdot?

[jdgeorge]

Touchscreens are awesome, and they are the future of a lot of human-computer interaction. They're simply not a substitute for a real keyboard, or a properly arranged physical workspace.

Re:Why is this crap even on Slashdot?

[bipbop]

They aren't necessarily tiresome. Some people can play games all day without hurting themselves.

Musicians learn to avoid building up muscle tension, both in the muscles they use, and sympathetic tension in the muscles they aren't using. They learn to keep good posture, keep their wrists relatively straight, to breathe properly and so forth, and these skills get passed down to new musicians.

The same skills apply to video games. But there's no "classical video game technique". People tense up, have terrible posture, and generally do things that will hurt themselves if they keep it up long enough. It's totally natural, and takes training for most people to avoid it.

I'm not proposing any particular solution to this, but I think some basic training might help with the sort of people who injure themselves playing video games. Certainly the ways to avoid RSI are non-obvious, whether you're playing Street Fighter or sitting in an office typing all day.

Re:Why is this crap even on Slashdot?

[shutdown -p now]

They're only good when you're doing very basic operations which don't require much control.

Which covers surprisingly many activities (time-wise). You listed one yourself - book reading. Now also think newspapers, and everything else online that's "consume only" - i.e. where you don't rush to post a witty comment as soon as you read it, as is the case on Slashdot.

The perfect device would have both touchscreen and keyboard+mouse/trackpad/trackpoint, and will adjust to whatever controls you're using at the moment. We're already seeing this emerge with Asus Transformer, Lenovo Thinkpad tablet, and other similar devices on hardware side, and Win8 (and, to some extent, Android) on software side.

Re:Why is this crap even on Slashdot?

[davester666]

Um, those aren't musicians. They're noise-makers.