12 Tech Habits To Keep Healthy For Life | Psychology Today

Parents often worry about how gaming, social media, or exposure to se or violence will affect their children's psychological development. But how often do you think about how it affects them (and us!) physically? Not just because we're sitting and not running around, but also because of the way we position and use our bodies.

If you close your eyes right now, can you feel it? Are there small points of tension in the back of your neck? In your teeth or jaws? In your wrists? How about your legs? I once spent months with aching legs before I realized that while sitting at my computer, I was pressing my legs against a crossbar on my desk. Almost 15 years later, I still suffer from vascular problems caused by that simple bad habit.

Kids spend hours a day at school using computers, phones, and laptops. Then they come home and use them some more. Helping them develop good habits can make a long term difference in their health.

Posture

Phones

You've probably seen in the news how the angle you hold your head has a huge effect on the muscle strain in your neck and back. It used to be that physical therapists were mostly treating older people for back pain. Now it's young people. The culprit? Cell phones.

The Cleveland Clinic's Dr. Bolash notes three things that happen when you drop your head forward to look at your phone or laptop:

• Your neck moves forward.
• Your shoulders round forward or lift up toward your ears.
• Your neck and shoulder muscles contract.

Take out your cell phone and try it. First hold it in your lap and look down. Now raise your head up straight and keep your phone in front of your eyes. You'll feel your shoulders drop. You will notice that your jaw changes how it sits in your skull, reducing pressure. You will feel a muscle change at the junction of spine and skull.

Habit 1: Hold your phone up. Your phone should be at least shoulder level. The slighter angle is much less stressful.

Habit 2: Arch your back. People used to associate stooped shoulders with bookishness. Now it's with texting. Arch your back and raise up your ribcage. You'll open up your lungs and relax those back muscles.

Habit 3: Straighten up. Your ears should be directly over your shoulders. If they're not, you're stooping forward.

Posture, Laptops, and computers

The same principle applies to computers. Are you reading this on a laptop or desktop computer? Are your ears directly over your shoulders? Mine are not, and I can feel it in my neck. If you spend a lot of time on the computer, spend five minutes thinking about your setup. I've written extensively about that before in Taking Control Of the Little Things: Your Computer. I'll be briefer here.

Habit 4: You want your monitor square in front of you at eye level. You need to be sitting square to it, not twisting. This sounds obvious, but isn't.

Habit 5: Take your chin off your hand. It dislocates your jaw, grinds your teeth, cocks your head, puts pressure on your wrist, and reduces circulation in your arm. 'Nuff said.

Habit 6: Keep wrists straight and relaxed. If you cock your wrists, it tightens your hand and arm muscles and strains your tendons. That spreads up and brings tension to your neck and shoulders - bad. The height of the surface supporting your computer is correct if when you are sitting up straight with your hands on the keyboard, when your arms hang loose from your shoulder, there's a 90 degree angle at the elbow.

Habit 7: Get a good chair and push your bottom back. You want a chair you don't slouch on. I use one of those Pilate ball chairs. It forces you to sit up straight and strengthens your core muscles. For me, it strengthened my core enough that I don't even lean back when driving. My son uses a wooden chair. You can use a roller, but you need to sit in it with your back STRAIGHT.

It is really easy to push your bottom forward, round your back, and keep your arms forward on the keyboard so you look like a comma. This systematically weakens your stomach and back muscles over time, making it easier to hurt yourself and throw your back. Sitting straight and walking are good exercises that should be part of every person's life.

Habit 8: Use opposing fingers and thumbs. People used to spend a lot of time on the mouse and get serious irritation in their elbows and shoulders. If that is still you, use the same principles discussed with keyboards to minimize tension and get the angle right.

But many of us now spend a lot of time with track pads. You will significantly reduce hand and arm strain if you use use BOTH hands to press multiple keys. If you ever took a formal typing class, you were taught to use the right shift key to make capitals on the the left side of the keyboard. This minimizes strain. Many keyboard shortcuts use Control, Option, and Command keys combined with letters. You should be using two hands to do those (thumb on right, finger on left or vice versa). It reduces strain in your hands and all the way up to your shoulder.

Pay Attention to Tension Points

Habit 9: Relax your jaw. Another thing you want to look for is whether you are tightening your jaw or grinding your teeth when looking at the screen. This irritates facial muscles and is a habit you have to consciously break.

Habit 10: Open your mouth slightly and drop your jaw. Relax your jaw so the tip of your tongue naturally lifts to the roof your mouth. This will relax your jaw and facial muscles. You'll feel an immediately difference both physically and psychologically.

Don't Forget Your Eyes!

You ALSO want to think about your eyes, because eye strain is a significant cause of headaches and muscle strain. When you look at screens, you blink much much less than normal.

Habit 11: Look up once an hour. If you spend a lot of time looking a screen, you are weakening your eye muscles because they are maintaining a constant focus. Who wants flabby eye muscles? Look up and out of a window or down a corridor at least once an hour. This will maintain flexibility in your eye muscles so you don't get eye strain and reduce the likelihood of needing glasses because of muscle degeneration.

Habit 12: Use eye drops. As mentioned previously, we blink less when we look at screens, so our eyes get dry. Using artificial tears will help maintain flexibility of the lenses, particularly as you get older.

Any activity you engage in many hours a day will change the way your body develops over a lifetime. Small changes can improve the way your body works over time rather than progressively weakening it.