While new technologies are meant to make our lives more efficient, it doesn’t mean they can’t, quite literally cause pain in the neck and shoulder for some people. Researchers at Harvard looked at students and their prolonged usage of tablets. In an effort to be fair, both the ipad2 and the Motorola Xoom were studied.
The researchers suspected there would be a higher risk of neck and shoulder discomfort in the tablet users as opposed to those students who used desktop or laptop computers. The students using the tablets appeared to have poorer posture due to the head/neck angles they maintained while using their tablets. Several configurations were studied, including the placement of the tablet in one’s lap, as well as the tablet in a case resting on a table. All the tablet arrangements showed a higher risk of neck and shoulder pain when compared to laptop and desktop computer users. Not surprisingly, the tablet brand did not seem to matter…..