Australia is pioneering the use of laptops in schools, but at what cost?
Extended and poor use of laptops by children may lead to long term health problems such as RSI, a world-first study by Australian researchers has warned.
A study of Perth school children using laptops showed 60 percent reported discomfort with laptop use and 61 percent discomfort from carrying their laptop.
Senior lecturer in ergonomics in the school of physiotherapy at Curtin University of Technology, Dr Leon Straker said the research suggested schoolchildren were exposing themselves to prolonged poor postures with laptops, leading to discomfort. Such poor posture comes at a critical time of skeletal growth for childrens' bodies.
Dr Straker said such discomfort posed the potential for the development of disorders such as RSI (Repetitive Strain Injury).
"What we learned from adults in the early 80s was that if people are feeling significant discomfort, and they continue doing the same activities, that discomfort will get worse and worse until it's disabling. Once it's disabling, it's a real long road back to get them to be fully functional, if you can ever get them back," he said.
"The upside is if you get people early enough when they're just getting discomfort, then if you address what's causing the pain you can stop it building up and they can be back fully fit and with no long term disability".
Eye strain and headaches also feature in the study, which notes these symptoms may be attributable to the smaller size of laptop screens and perhaps the clarity of screen display.
The study noted Australia was pioneering the use of laptops in schools, particularly within the private education sector.
The study of 314 students aged 10 to 17 from three private schools in Perth showed students used laptops in a variety of postures. Sitting at a desk accounted for only 34 per cent of mean weekly use. The remainder including lying prone, sitting on the floor, sitting on a stool and sitting with laptop on lap.
Dr Straker said postural variety was good, but "with freedom comes responsibility and some of those postures that they can get into are going to be a problem for them".
The study showed mean daily laptop use each school day was 3.2 hours (ranging up to a maximum of 15 hours), with a mean weekly use of 16.9 hours.
But optometrist Geoffrey Kaye, who is starting a study with Dr Straker looking at the way children used computers, said children should be limited to no more than 30 minutes at a time on a computer.
He said Dr Straker's study was an Australian first, as will be their joint study. He said that, until now there has been no research on children and how they used computers, so how, or if, children were suffering from computer use was not known.
"But conventional wisdom tells us that you can't use the eye system in this way for long hours.without there being some sort of effect, but typically kids wont complain," he said.
Dr Straker's study concluded laptops were valuable tools within the school environment, but the findings suggested schools and other organisations underwent careful consideration when deciding to use this type of technology and how they taught users to operate laptops.
