When your tech becomes a real pain in the neck
How you can fix these 3 major health complaints
Americans now spend more than five hours a day hunched over, reading emails, sending texts or checking social media sites, according to analytics firm Flurry — and it’s turning into a real pain in the neck.
No really, there’s actually a condition called “tech neck,” and there’s a good chance you — or someone in your family — have it.
ImagineMD, a direct primary care medical company based in Chicago, gathered Google search trend data to rank tech pains by the number of times people searched for them. “Tech neck” is one of the most frequently Googled tech-related conditions in the U.S. these days, right behind “texting thumb” and “cell phone elbow.”
And while the terms might sound funny, these tech-related conditions can be serious and painful. Here are the top three — and what to do about them.
Gamer’s thumb, aka texting thumb
Thumb pain is the No. 1 mostsearched-for technology-related injury, according to that ImagineMD report.
It’s a repetitive stress injury, caused by too much gripping, tapping and swiping, either on a videogame controller or a smartphone screen, says Robert Wysocki, an orthopedic surgeon at the Rush University Medical Center in Chicago.
The fix
Wysocki recommends changing how you type on your phone, such as switching between your left and right hands regularly, rather than relying on one to do all the work. Holding your phone in one hand and typing with the pointer finger of the other is another easy way to give your thumb a rest.
Tech neck
I’ve been calling it the “cyber slouch.” Twice a week for nearly six weeks now, I’ve gone to a physical therapist to deal with chronic upper back, neck, shoulder and headache pain. I thought it was caused by an old sports injury, or maybe because I travel too much for work. Or because I just work too hard in general.
But no, it’s all due to how much time I spend slouching behind my laptop or hovering over my smartphone, says my physical therapist.
According to Andrew Lui, a physical therapist and associate clinical professor at the University of California San Francisco’s Physical Therapy and Rehabilitation Science department, one quick way to see if you might be suffering from tech neck is to look at your profile sideways in a mirror. If your ears are not lined up with your shoulders, your posture may be promoting chronic pain.
The more you tilt your head forward and down, the more gravity increases the weight to your neck. Tilting your head 30 degrees equals about 40 pounds of strain on your neck. A 60-degree tilt is equivalent to 60 pounds of force.
The fix
“Think about your body as much as you think about your work,” Lui says. He encourages people to make their workstations fit their body, rather than the other way around — the scrunch, hunch, slouch, lean, tilt and slump that so many of us fall into.
Email eye, aka digital eye strain
A headache and itchy eyes after long hours staring at a computer aren’t just the side effect of a workday. Your screen stare can cause chronic health problems over time, according to the American Optometric Association. Symptoms of digital eye strain can also include blurred vision and seeing double.
The fix
The AOA calls it the “20-20-20” rule: For every 20 minutes you spend staring at the screen, look away for 20 seconds at something that is 20 feet away.