When Apple computers recently announced its record-breaking profits, due in part to selling almost 75 million iPhones in the last three months of 2014, my heart sank. Not because I don’t have shares in Apple, but because of the increasing problems I see around static loading from smartphone and tablet use.
Static loading is what happens when effort is used to keep, for example, an arm still. Think holding your smartphone while scrolling through your Twitter feed. In this scenario, the arm muscles tense as they are held aloft, causing fatigue and eventually pain. Restricted blood flow adds to the problem as it impedes the body’s natural healing process.
“Muscles subject to static work need 12 times longer to recover from fatigue,” said Vern Putz-Anderson, public health advisor for the US’s National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, in his book Cumulative Trauma Disorders: A Manual for Musculoskeletal Diseases of the Upper Limbs. “…in the absence of sufficient recovery time, prolonged and excessive static work will weaken joints, ligaments and tendons.”
Of course, smartphones and tablets aren’t totally responsible for computer-related static loading, but they certainly are making the problems worse. Now that it’s so easy to constantly be on-screen – switching from desktop to laptop to tablet to smartphone and back again and again – our muscles are never getting any downtime. We’ve yet to see a full decade of widespread smartphone and tablet use. Where will we be in the coming years, when tablets and phablets (phone/tablet hybrid) replace desktops and laptops altogether?
Perhaps we should go the way of the French and implement rules requiring employees to shut down after six in the evening? I suspect such rules will be found to be unsustainable for many reasons. Either way, they won’t help with static loading (and other potential digital device related physical health problems), because even if you shut off from work, it’s unlikely that you’ve shut off completely.
It’s time we equip employees with strategies to help them protect themselves, both from the infringement on their work/life balance and the physical repercussions of all that tap, tap, tapping.
We need DSE risk assessments that take a holistic approach, including an examination of the employee’s total daily digital device use. Next, we need to raise awareness about potential health problems – static loading and beyond – and the important part that dynamic movement and digital downtime plays in health.
We also need to empower employees with a good knowledge of ergonomic set up and the ability to apply it (at least a best-case-scenario set up) in every environment in which they operate, e.g. at work, at home, on the train, in their local café, etc.
Finally, we need to encourage employees and companies to come up with their own ideas for integrating dynamic movement and digital downtime into their day.
Get a little digital downtime with these ideas:
Raquel Baetz helps businesses keep their employees safe from the ill effects associated with prolonged digital device use. She is an independent computer workstation risk assessor, qualified via the British Safety Council. Raquel draws on her personal experience with chronic repetitive strain injury to inform the advice she gives. For info, visit www.safehandsdse.com
For your daily ergonomic tip, follow Raquel on Twitter at www.twitter.com/SafeHandsDSE
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For all Fibromyalgia sufferers – This is a warning about using smartphones and tablets…
I am a fibromyalgia sufferer and have had it for the last 29 years and have had many problems with all sorts of muscular spasms and extreme pain etc, but a couple of years ago now I started to suffer from terrible pains in my shoulds and my neck. Now initially I thought nothing of it, as I had suffered similar pains like it before and usually it would flair up and ease sometimes just a few weeks, other times a few months, but this time it was different, it just kept getting worse.
Now looking back, I can see when it all started, pinpointing it to the time I got my first smart phone. After a few weeks of using it for doing all sorts of things like playing games reading, watching youtube etc I started to notice I was getting a lot of pain in my left shoulder (I used my left hand to hold the phone). I put this down to my Fibromyalgia, as I had had similar problems like it before. but instead of the usual flair-up it just kept getting worse and worse until I was in so much pain and the muscles in my shoulder and neck, made that side of me look like Arnold Schwarzenegger. I then started to lose the use of my left arm and lost feeling to the left side of my face and left shoulder. At this point I ended up in A&E, followed by a few trips to hospital, having two MRI’s and an X-ray. Initially they thought they had found something in my neck that might have caused all the problems. They put me on some very strong drugs for the pain and inflammation and told me to do nothing that could move my neck too much and wait to see a specialist prior to what I was told was going to be very major surgery. When I finally got to see the specialist, he looked at the MRI’s and X-ray, then examined me and to my surprise, told me that the thing in my neck was nothing to do with all the problems in my shoulder and neck and that it was all due to my Fibromyalgia flairing up for some reason.
It was at this point I started to think about what could be causing all this and came to the conclusion that it all started around the time I got my smart phone and got worse when I got my tablet. But as the changes were so gradual, I just hadn’t put one and one together.
I now use a stand for my tablet, especially when using it for any length of time, such as reading or watching a film or youtube and since then the pain and the inflammation has subsided, to the point I’m able to do things again, like help around the house and hopefully start working again.
Unfortunately, because I wasn’t able to do any exercise for many months, plus some of my drugs I’m taking cause weight gain and the feeling of hunger, I have put on a huge amount of weight, which is now causing yet further problems, with my knees and back, to the point where I can sometimes barely walk.
So basically, all because I used a smartphone and tablet, I have so far lost nearly two years and a half of my life due to crippling pain and I still have some way to go before I get my life back, that is as much back as any person with fibromyalgia can.
So if you are a fibromyalgia sufferer, use a stand or holder of some sort when using your phone or tablet for any length of time and that includes calls, just put it on speaker and put the phone down.