Between my academic duties and professional career, I have amassed nearly 14 years of daily computer use. It’s surreal when I look back at it, but every time I try to physically look back in the real world, I am reminded of the harm done to my neck and back from the hours spent staring at a computer.
I have developed what my therapist refers to as a protruded head and neck posture. The impact of sitting hunched over a chair is visible on my neck, and I feel the muscles strain every time I try to sit straight for even 10-15 minutes in one go. I’ve tried every possible solution, ranging from back support and headrest to an elevated workstation and a posture corrector.
But the overarching conclusion, based on advice from doctors and my own research, is that I really need to stay vigilant about my posture. It’s easier said than done, especially when you’re deep into work (or gaming) mode. Lately, I’ve experimented with an app called Pose Nudge, which keeps an eye on your neck and shoulder through a laptop’s camera, sends you an alert when it detects poor neck and shoulder posture, and also creates a report of your progress.
What is the app all about?
Notifications sent by the app. Yeah, my posture is terrible. Nadeem Sarwar / Digital Trends
Pose Nudge is a free and open-source Mac app that runs in the background, while keeping an eye on you through the webcam. Using AI, it performs real-time posture analysis. Specifically, it calculates the neck angle and shoulder line relative to the face and rest of the body — a technique that is used by healthcare experts — and warns users when they regress into a “turtle neck” pose.
Aside from sending notifications, the app also ranks your posture on a scale of 0-100 in real-time and accordingly creates a detailed report on a dashboard. The app runs locally and fully offline, which means no data leaves your computer and no cloud processing is involved.
When the webcam is active, the app runs as a Menu bar utility, where you can choose to start/stop the monitoring activity, or quit the app entirely with a couple of clicks. It’s also pretty lightweight, so you won’t feel it crashing down on the system resources in your quest to fix the bad computer posture.
How is it helping me?
Nadeem Sarwar / Digital Trends
As I mentioned above, I have developed a chronic back and neck pain issue due to years of bad posture habits. The situation is further exacerbated by the fact that I live out of a suitcase for the better part of the year. Or in modern terms, a “workation” phase that has spanned the last four years.
Simply put, I don’t quite have the luxury of setting up an immaculate workstation with an ergonomic chair and all the supportive gear to take care of my neck and back issues. Mostly, it’s either a designer cafe chair with barely any attention to human comfort, a lounge sofa, park chairs, or the humble bed-lap combo. That has definitely not helped my cause, but the lack of intervention is what I miss, as well.
Pose Nudge tries to fix the gap in a few ways, starting with a reference pose for analysis. So, whether you are working on a standing desk or propping your laptop on a coffee table, you can click a picture of the “correct” posture that will be used as a reference for analyzing your posture changes over the entire duration of your work spell.
Nadeem Sarwar / Digital Trends
Once the reference posture is set, the app monitors your neck and shoulder as you lose yourself in work or play. As soon as the app detects your head peeking forward into the screen, slouching sideways, or any awkward shoulder alignment, the app will send a notification about the problematic stance.
Now, the app doesn’t kick into action for every momentary shift from the “naturally good” posture. The minimum analysis interval is three seconds, but you can adjust between 5, 7, 10, and 15 seconds, as well.
You can set how many notifications you want to see for every third instance of poor posture. You can choose to get one, or up to three, nudges. Additionally, you also have the option of selecting between three sensitivity levels, each, for neck and shoulder posture correction, going from loose to strict.
Nadeem Sarwar / Digital Trends
Now, as far as the accuracy goes, the notification alerts work fine. Personally, I prefer keeping an eye on the dashboard. While my average posture score was fairly decent at 96/10, it’s the number of instances that matter more. In my most recent monitoring test, a 15-minute work session reported 23 instances of bad posture.
The app’s posture detection system can occasionally misfire, depending on the area that is captured by the camera. If the viewfinder only has a shallow view of the shoulder area, the detection accuracy is lower. However, if the laptop is at a distance that allows a proper view from head to chest area, the neck and shoulder posture issues are flagged with higher accuracy.
Once again, I would suggest that you don’t dwell too much on the turtle neck notifications. After seeing a few, you consciously try to maintain a good posture. But real progress is seeing the score improve, and more importantly, the number of bad posture instances in each work session. It certainly helped me.
Of course, that green camera light was a persistent reminder that someone was watching me at all times. Even if that someone is a piece of software, I would gladly accept whatever little progress I have made. In merely a few days of usage, I have found myself sitting straight, almost out of a surveillance fear, just to see a posture score in the safe “green” limit.
What research has to say about the problem?
Now, you must be thinking whether it’s too extreme to have your body posture analyzed at all times by a camera. Well, that would depend on how bad your back and neck issues are. Is the situation with prolonged computer usage and its health impact serious enough? It has been proven by research, so that should clear the air.
Over the past few decades, numerous papers have shed light on the impact of bad posture habits linked to prolonged computer usage in the office or at home. As per research published in Nature, “lower back, neck, upper back, and shoulder were the most affected body parts,” among computer users. The team also focused on the increased risk of musculoskeletal disorders (MSD) in users over the age of 30, and how the health impacts aggravate if they don’t engage in regular exercise.
A meta-analysis of over 20 studies published in the Journal of Back and Musculoskeletal Rehabilitation notes that sedentary sitting patterns, fewer breaks, bad sitting posture, and sitting time are associated with lower back pain. Among office workers, the effect on lower back, upper back, neck, and shoulders is particularly pronounced, a situation that is described as Work-Related Musculoskeletal Disorder in the Heliyon journal.
The Journal of Preventive Medicine also focused on Work-related Musculoskeletal Disorders (WMSDs) among IT professionals and found that the neck area is the biggest zone of discomfort, followed by the back. The paper proposed that health and labor authorities look into the impact of time spent on workstations, arrange posture training, and adjust the workplace environment.
A digital solution like Pose Nudge is a great start. It tries to tackle a problem right where it begins. It’s not the whole relief, and I would recommend stretching and daily exercises to counter the impact of time spent in sedentary sitting during work hours. There are instances where this app can be slow at detection, and occasionally, it fumbles badly. But overall, the net impact is positive, and it doesn’t hurt to give this one a shot.