How mobiles can make you SEASICK
TECHNOLOGY has opened up a whole new world for June Eaton. Thanks to Skype, Facebook, email and texts, the 71-yearold grandmother of six and great-grandmother of two can keep in touch with family members who are dotted all over the globe.
‘My daughter Suzanne lives in Dubai, my sister Frances is in America and I have relatives in Australia and a grandson in Ireland, too, so it’s absolutely lovely to be able to send messages or talk to them on screen, where they can show me where they live and what they’re doing,’ says June, who lives with her husband Douglas, 76, in Monmouthshire.
‘I feel I wouldn’t be able to get as involved in their lives without my phone or computer.’ Yet communicating with her loved ones via the latest gadget is a mixed blessing for June.
It’s not that she isn’t technically minded. Indeed, she was a computer programmer for IBM before becoming a full-time mother in the early Seventies.
But June suffers from ‘cybersickness’ — a modern malaise thought to affect 80 per cent of the population to some degree — which means she can look at a touchscreen or laptop for only a few seconds before she begins to feel queasy.
Cybersickness, which produces symptoms including nausea, dizziness and headaches, is rather like sea or motion sickness. The brain senses motion, thanks to the screen being moved up and down. But as the body does not experience this, the resulting confusion causes queasiness.
And it seems it can affect people of any age. One study by researchers at the Kaohsiung Normal University, in Taiwan, asked a group of people to play a console game for 50 minutes, stopping if they felt ill. More than two thirds of the adults — 67 per cent — and 56 per cent of the children reported feeling queasy.
A study at the University of Minnesota found that games console sickness may be more common in women than in men, which may also be true of cybersickness.
JUNE is certainly affected if she has to look at movement on a screen for too long. ‘If I have a long email to read, I can’t scroll up and down because my head starts spinning and I begin to feel sick,’ she says.
‘If I’m on Skype to my daughter, I’m fine as long as she keeps still. But if she starts to move the camera — for example, if she is showing me another part of her house, or the view outside — I have to look away, blink and come back to it a few seconds later.
‘I could never read something like a newspaper or magazine online — all that moving down the screen with my eyes would make me too nauseous. Although I’ve never vomited, I do feel quite ill.
‘My grandchildren can be quite mischievous and take advantage if they ever catch me looking over their shoulder at the laptop to see what they’re doing. They make it flash or move up and down — that’s one way to get rid of me!’
Dr Cyriel Diels, senior lecturer at the Centre for Mobility and Transport at the University of Coventry, says the technology industry has been aware of such problems for almost 30 years.
‘Motion sickness when using virtual reality technology, such as headsets for video games, is downplayed by the industry,’ he says,’ but some people are hypersensitive to it.
‘I had a letter a week ago from a lady who said her son is unable to pursue his career because of cybersickness caused by looking at his computer screen.
‘When the mini-iPad was launched a few years ago and some icons seemed to “float” across the screen, some users complanied of feeling queasy too. But it is more usual when you’re exposed to larger screens, rather than phones or tablets.
‘It’s caused by your brain thinking you’re moving even though you’re stationary.
‘Your sense of motion when you’re walking about comes from two things — what you see and your vestibular system, the part of the inner ear that monitors movement and helps control balance. But if your eyes detect movement and your body doesn’t, or vice versa, it can create motion sickness.’
But it may not just be the screen moving that causes problems. Laura Reynolds, 26, a full-time mum who lives near Shrewsbury, in Shropshire, says even looking at a static screen gives her cybersickness.
Several years ago she first noticed that staring at her phone for long periods gave her migraines and queasiness. Now, pregnant with her second baby, she says even looking at her phone for a few seconds can trigger morning sickness that lasts all day.
‘I’m something of a phonejunkie and used to read books and newspapers on my phone, as well as going on Facebook and messaging for up to six hours a day,’ says Laura, who lives with partner Keiron, 26, a mechanic, and their two-yearold son Ethan.
‘Even though I found it made me dizzy and a bit nauseous and gave me migraines, it’s so convenient to read from your phone, so I’d just keep doing it and ignore the symptoms. Waiting in a queue is never boring when you have a library of books in your pocket that you can read on your smartphone.
‘But now, just one glance at the little bright screen on my phone can make me actually vomit. I don’t know if it’s because I’m straining my eyes to look at something so small — I wear glasses because I’m longsighted — or if it’s got something to do with the screen brightness, but I avoid looking at my phone if I can now.’
EYE strain could well be a factor in feelings of nausea, according to experts. ‘If you’re constantly looking down at your phone, you’re working at the limits of your ocular motor system, or the muscle system of your eye. This strain creates tiny movements in your eyeball, which the brain interprets as movement — and that can make you feel queasy,’ says Bobby Qureshi, consultant ophthalmologist at the London Eye Hospital. ‘Wearing the right prescription lenses is important to avoid eye strain, as is having a screen break every 20 minutes or so to focus on something in the far distance, even for ten seconds. And I’d suggest people try not to look at their phones or iPads for more than a couple of hours a day without taking a break, if possible.’
But for sufferers like Laura, that means missing out.
‘Most of my family live in Derbyshire and we’re constantly texting each other to keep in touch,’ she says.
‘The other week I completely missed an invitation to my cousin’s engagement party because I’d not looked at my phone for so long. But it’s not worth the risk of being so ill.’