It's handy for those in the digital and software industries, but bad news for physical fitness: children's hands don't work like they used to. Like the rest of their bodies in our online virtual world, hands don't get much exercise. They are atrophying, which causes the newly-identified Hand Fatigue Syndrome.
"Kids' fingers are reverting to the tree-grasping claws of our early pre-human ancestors," warn experts.
Since learning-at-home took over during the COVID pandemic, kids spend even more time online than they did in classrooms, observers note. "We're seeing a new epidemic of hand dysfunction."
Physiotherapists are worried. "I have clients who can't even hold a pen, let alone write with one."
But, "who needs handwriting?" ask educators. "Penmanship is an elitist colonialist concept."
Kids' hands might soon be able only to peck keyboards, not pick up objects. No grasping a ball, let alone throwing one. No turning a door handle, since most doors have auto-openers one need only press. Tapping on digital devices, only the index finger gets a work-out today.
Fingertips have become insensitive, feeling only smooth plastic surfaces. The brain isn't being fed other sensory information, and brain regions to do with touch, texture and dexterity are shrinking. We are becoming less dexterous (right-handed) and increasingly sinister (left-handed) in our manipulations.
The word "digital" comes from "digit" which means finger. Fingertips used to be the body's "eyes" on the tactile world, but they are going blind. We live in a push-button world.
When polled, five out of ten teens reported that physically turning the pages of a book is challenging. "Where's the swipe function?" they ask.
"Finger joints no longer get a work-out, which impacts wrist joints which also have less to do in the smartphone-pecking lifestyle," warn physiotherapists.
Software developers scoff at concerns. "None of that matters," they declare, "because soon we'll have robots performing most tasks. Artificial intelligence is the future, body-based intelligence an artifact of the dark pre-tech past."
"Plus, the playing field will be levelled between disabled and abled when everything is done by robots anyway," point out delighted disability advocates.
Hand-eye coordination will be a quaint notion from our ape-ancestry days, as will the notion of a 'playing field' itself; there will be only online play. No fields. No baseball-catching, no frisbee throwing, no berry-picking in meadows. "We're working on playing on screens by thought alone," enthuse new software developers.
"It'll come, once we get the right electrodes implanted in the brain. Never mind hands, we'll hardly need bodies at all.
