Fast moving digital images cause nausea & cybersickness
Usually something you ate caused nausea. But in this fast-paced world, watching a gory fast-paced digital image on your smartphone or tablet could give you headache, dizziness or nausea; and it’s becoming very common.
It is a 21st century phenomenon and is called cybersickness or digital motion sickness (DMS). According to medical and media experts, viewing moving digital content cause a person to feel as if in a boat in a rough sea.
‘It’s a fundamental problem that’s been kind of been swept under the carpet in the tech industry ,’ said Cyriel Diels, a cognitive psychologist and human factors researcher at Coventry University’s Centre for Mobility and Transport in England. ‘It’s a natural response to an unnatural environment.’
Among the medical professionals, DMS is known as visually induced motion sickness and it stems from a basic mismatch between sensory inputs, said Steven Rauch, medical director of the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Balance and Vestibular Center and professor of otolaryngology at Harvard Medical School. ‘Your sense of balance is different than other senses in that it has lots of inputs,’ he said. ‘When those inputs don’t agree, that’s when you feel dizziness and nausea.’
In motion sickness, that you know or have experienced, the mismatch occurs because you feel movement in your muscles and joints as well as in the intricate coils of your inner ear, but you do not see it. That is why getting up on the deck of a ship and looking at the horizon helps you feel better. While with DMS, it is the opposite. The movement is seen by you, but not felt, as in the video game car chase. The result is the same: You may have sensory conflict that can make you feel queasy .
DMS can happen to anyone, even if you have not had motion sickness in cars, boats or airplanes. In fact, studies indicate up to 80% of people may be affected depending on how the digital image has been designed.
Studies indicate that women are more susceptible than men.
It’s high time to spend less time seen the fast-paced digital images on your phones or tablets.
