Does your head start to swirl the moment you stare at the laptop or smart phone screen? Do you feel dizzy and nausea after a few “computer working hours? Symptoms may be similar but its passé for sea sickness and car sickness, you may be suffering from “cyber-sickness”, say researchers. Don’t check your diet charts or your sleep habits, it’s nothing you ate, it’s encouraging a wrong posture and having constant eye movement for a long time.
Have you heard about ‘digital motion sickness’? It is a lot similar to riding in a vehicle, airplane or boat but it’s in front of the monitor images. The sensory inputs comprehend a mismatch because there is no movement of the body basically, but motion sickness is a result of the constant motions that you see on the screen of your laptop or phone. The basic reason for this is that we believe we are in a state of motion whereas we are sitting still.
A cognitive psychologist and human factors researcher Cyriel Diels, from the Coventry University’s Centre for Mobility and Transport in England, states “It’s a natural response to an unnatural environment. It’s a fundamental problem that’s been kind of swept under the carpet in the tech industry.” Common symptoms that a person sitting hours in front of the computer screen faces are headache, eye inflammation, sweating, nausea, inability to focus, migraine, vertigo or dizziness.
. There is a disparity between the vestibular input and ocular input, and this leads to feelings of nausea.
The only way to treat this is to stroll around and take a break from the laptop gazing. Look here and there away from the monitor screens and limit the hours you spend playing games or making worksheets on the computer. You can get relief by chewing some gum or sucking on a sweet. The neck muscles start to sag, and the face also starts to develop wrinkles and frown lines, because of the constant staring down into the phones or computer screens. The joints, especially the thumb, also develop injuries because of the key tapping for long hours. The finger joints start to develop swelling with time that can be extremely painful.
Approval from friends and colleagues become a style statement and an ignoring on social media can lead to a state of depression and a desperate pressing of keys. Public approval becomes necessary to keep loneliness away. People who encourage portable audio gadgets like headphones may face difficulty in hearing over time. Besides these physical conditions you may also be a potential candidate for “computer hunch” that is a painful state in which movement of arms, neck and the head becomes an agony! Take care and make sure you flex your muscles and do your neck exercises at regular intervals when you sit in front of your laptop!
