Children get RSI from gaming

here's an interesting one - a physiotherapist claims she's seeing far more cases of RSI in children because of gaming, mainly due to the amount of time spent playing them. She suggests the controllers force unnatural ways of sitting and moving.

Not sure about this. Firstly all controllers are different, and most are ergonomically designed to fit around the natural way your hands fall. Handheld consoles are possibly the odd ones out here because they cram a lot into a small space. I've been gaming for nearly 30 years, starting with systems where the controllers seemed designed to punish you, and I haven't had a touch of RSI. This also includes a fair few all nighters for major games where in all honesty I probably should have taken a break.

I'm also less convinced that gaming can have as dramatic an affect as playing an instrument, a sport etc. Tennis is pretty brutal on your wrists for example, and footballers claim their wages are justified because injuries put paid to their career by the time most people are halfway through theirs.

http://www.getwokingham.co.uk/news/s/2108626_children_spend_too_long_playing_computer_games

I find keyboards are the worst offender for that, mainly because of the wrist angle created by resting the palm of your hand on the desktop. You have to be sitting quite low in order to minimise that angle. I've had cramp from a Dreamcast pad before because the grips aren't really big enough, and I used to have issues with the old square Atari joystick gouging a pit in my palm during International Karate sessions

When working in IT I regularly found people who had serious RSI in their mouse hand/wrist despite only using it for an hour or so every couple of days. I get the feeling that the better you are at using the technology, the less impact it'll have. By that token regular gamers are the least likely to be affected as they've naturally refined their movements and grip for minimal impact.

It's quite easy for the inexperienced to overdo the pressure required when playing games that require quick reactions - it's that force that probably causes the most problems. There's also a better chance that your workstation is properly set up for comfortable typing. If we're talking about consoles then it might depend more on the specific controller or the size of the hands using it.

Modified once, last modified by Kuang on Tue 21st February, 2012 @ 6:57pm