Excessive tech use can cause physical ailments; experts recommend five-min breaks every half an hour

By Tushar Kaushik

BENGALURU: Experts at the National Institute of Mental Health and Neuro Sciences (NIMHANS) are recording a rise in cases of physical issues caused by excessive use of internet, especially among teenagers and adolescents.

The Services for Healthy Use of Technology (SHUT) clinic, which helps people deal with technology-based addictions, receives 7-8 cases per week of patients reporting physical distress due to time spent on the internet. The ailments include strained eyes, text neck syndrome, carpal tunnel syndrome (pain in fingers) and tennis elbow (pain near the elbow), due to usage of both laptops and phones.


Dr Manoj Kumar Sharma, professor of clinical psychology at Nimhans and head of SHUT clinic, said when people stare at computer or phone screens for a prolonged period, they tend to blink less frequently than usual, straining the eyes. Similarly, viewing the phone by keeping the head in a downward position for long periods can cause the ‘text neck syndrome,’ which involves repetitive stress injury to the neck, Dr Sharma said.

Symptoms of ‘carpal tunnel syndrome’ include pain and numbness in the fingers, and can be caused by holding the phone or the computer mouse for long durations in a way that strains the wrist. Tennis elbow is the inflammation of tendons near the elbow and can be aggravated when the elbow remains in a stationary position for a long time. Physiotherapist at Nimhans Dr Rajesh VL said these two syndromes are common. “We have identified some common muscular skeletal disorders that occur due to the posture of users during work,” Rajesh said. Cases of spondylitis and pain in the brachioradialis muscle have also been reported due to incorrect work postures, he said.

For heavy internet users, Sharma recommends five-minute breaks every half an hour. “During a break, users should blink their eyes, move their heads forward and backward five times each, move the wrist clockwise and anti-clockwise five times each and stretch their legs.” These physical ailments can affect anyone and not just those addicted to the internet.

Apparently, most patients approaching the clinic complaining of these symptoms are teenagers in the 15-20 age group. Sharma attributes this to the pressures they face, including parental pressure, and that of entrance exams. “Most first-year and second-year (PUC) students have phones and they use it to access even study material, and, thus, end up spending a lot of time looking at phones,” he said.

A case report authored by Sharma, published in the 2016 Industrial Psychiatry Journal, titled ‘Wikipedia use: Risk for Developing Technology Addiction’ highlights an extreme case of how addiction to internet can have physical manifestations.

One user reported excessive use of Wikipedia — 8-10 hours per day on an average — over five years on his mobile phone. Due to this, the user, a student, developed neck pain, body strain, eye strain, delay in initiation of sleep for about two hours from the scheduled time and tended to hold his bladder for three to four hours while browsing.