How Too Much PC Usage is Bad for You

It must be said, computers are fantastic, although also they are bad. They may be good in the sense that they allow us to accomplish a lot of things which we otherwise wouldn’t manage to do, and they connect us in ways we couldn’t have dreamed of a long time ago. Nevertheless, there's a bad side to computer use, and in the next few paragraphs we are going to take a look at the key ways by which your computer could be harming your health.

It’s Bad for Your Eyesight

Watching a visual display unit for too long is bad for your eyes and causes you to feel tired. As a species, we didn’t evolve in a way which was suited to looking at one thing for hours on end, especially if it’s something close up because that's more straining for our eyes than focusing on something further away. It’s better for our eyes to look at different things at varying distances.

One way to combat this is to have your computer near a window. Every couple of minutes you can look up from your computer screen and look at the more distant view outside. Another great way to combat it is to force yourself to take a complete computer break every hour. You can even download free software which reminds you each hour to take a 10 minute break.

It’s Quite a Inactive Way to Spend Your Time

If you’re sat looking at a screen all day, you’re usually so focussed on whatever it is which you’re doing on the computer that you’re not really moving your body much. As a species, we evolved to be active. Sitting in front of a screen for hours on end isn't an active thing to do.

Obviously, many of us have jobs which involve a lot of computer use. In a lot of ways that's unavoidable. However, along with the suggestions mentioned above, there are other ways in which we could address this issue. Reassess your computer use in your job. Do you need to use your computer for everything? To give you an idea, as an alternative to sending someone an e-mail, why not walk round to their desk and talk to them.

You Ignore Other Pleasurable Activities

If you happen to spend all day on a computer in the office, I’m willing to bet that you most likely use a computer at home quite a lot too. Whenever you’ve finished your hard day in the office, you want to enjoy watching funny videos, browsing interesting pages, and chatting to your friends on Facebook or Twitter.

The issue with that is that not only does it mean you'll have spent almost the whole day staring at a screen, but you will not have had any time to do other activities which you may otherwise enjoy if you didn’t have a computer. For example: reading, going for a walk, visiting your pals in person (rather than just chatting online on Facebook), or even even visiting the gym. Or let’s say it’s the weekend. What are you likely to do? Spend the day playing a web based game, or actually go out somewhere nice for your day?