Switched has a new home! Huffpost Tech.

Click here to visit the new home of Switched!

Hot on HuffPost Tech:

See More Stories
AOL Tech

Your Thumbs Aren't Made for Texting

by Terrence O'Brien on April 15, 2009 at 10:09 AM


File this firmly under "D," for "Duh," but a new study in the South African Medical Journal is reporting that text messaging can lead to repetitive strain injuries (RSI) and damage to our thumbs.

Researchers interviewed 318 teens at two South African high schools for the study, and over half reported having at least one of the main symptoms of RSI, which include pain or tingling in the neck, hands, or back. Even more bizarrely, almost half of the students (125 of them) reported having developed blisters from text messaging. This leads us to believe that South African teens are doing something wrong, since even Emily Jennings, who sent over 41,000 texts in a month, was thumb-blister-free.

We've been warning you since 2007 to take it easy on your thumbs. They're designed for grasping, not for high-speed, dexterity-demanding tasks like typing. [From: Times of India]

Related Links:

Tags: health, repetitive strain injury, RepetitiveStrainInjury, rsi, sms, text-messaging, texting, thumb, top

Comments

2

Add your comments

Please keep your comments relevant to this blog entry. Email addresses are never displayed, but they are required to confirm your comments.

When you enter your name and email address, you'll be sent a link to confirm your comment, and a password. To leave another comment, just use that password.

To create a live link, simply type the URL (including http://) or email address and we will make it a live link for you. You can put up to 3 URLs in your comments. Line breaks and paragraphs are automatically converted — no need to use <p> or <br /> tags.

HuffPost AOL Social News Most Popular